A Candle in the Dark
by TheHylianPoet
Summary: Being a janitor at a run-down pizzeria is not the most fun job in the world. So when Link is asked to fill in as night guard, he jumps at the opportunity. He thinks it's a win-win situation – do nothing, get paid – but it doesn't take long for him to uncover the truth about this dark place. Will he survive five nights at Freddy's?
1. Prologue

It was stupid. It was absolutely stupid, in every way possible.

But Link was doing it anyway.

Looking back, it had started out relatively harmless. He'd been at work as usual, mopping the dining room floor for the fifteenth time that morning (some kid had dropped a bag of potato chips and proceeded to walk on them, the little snot) when a puffy-faced, mustached man had approached him, breathing heavily through his nose, a ring of keys dangling from his sausage-like hands. "Hey. Janitor."

He had to repeat this three times before Link finally took out his earbuds and looked up, trying to pretend he wasn't annoyed by the interruption. It took him a moment to match the guy's face with a name. One of the night guards. Jesse something. Or was it Jake? Link couldn't remember – there had been so many night guards since he'd started working here that they all sort of blurred together after a while. Sometimes he wondered where they went.

He never asked.

"Can you cover my shift tonight?" Jesse/Jake/What's-His-Face went on, nervously adjusting his overalls with his thumbs. "Just got a call – my wife's in labor at the hospital."

Link debated for a moment. He had to pay for college somehow, and in the past he'd always been willing to pick up odd jobs around this place when the employees were busy (or just didn't feel like working, as was usually the case). He'd filled in at least four times for the chef – and had subsequently discovered just how disgusting the pizzas were at this place – and three times for the employees who worked the kids' birthday parties. Although, to be fair, he was never doing that last one again. At every party he'd supervised, the kids had been utterly unmanageable. They wouldn't stop running around the building; they loved throwing food around for a certain, very annoyed janitor to clean up later; and most irritating of all, they kept trying to climb onto the stage to join the pizzeria's resident animatronics in their daily song-and-dance routine. The day shift workers always got nervous when people got too close to those robots. Link had always assumed it was because they didn't want them getting broken.

But there were the rumors. There were always the rumors – some people claimed that long ago, a fox animatronic had bitten one of the kids, which had eventually led to the previous location shutting down. That animatronic had been retired now, and they said that he still hid behind his purple curtain at the defunct Pirate's Cove.

Other people said, however, that Freddy Fazbear himself had done the deed. They said if you got up close, you could still see the handprints on his face as the bitten, dying child had tried in vain to pry him off.

Link, of course, didn't believe a word of it.

Which was why, seeing What's-His-Face's pleading expression, he realized that he had no other choice.

"Sure," he said. "I'll do it."

"Great," What's-His-Face said, looking relieved – a little too relieved, but Link didn't notice at the time. He tossed Link the keys; the newly christened night guard caught them easily. "My shift always starts at midnight. Don't know how long I'll be gone. Probably a week or so." His mustached face split into a smile. "Got a baby boy on the way."

"Congratulations," Link said politely. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to say, and besides, What's-His-Face was clearly expecting some kind of reaction to the news.

"Thank you," What's-His-Face said, beaming so widely that his mustache bristled. "But anyway, the job's pretty easy. You just have to sit there and watch some security footage, check that the entrances are closed, make sure that everything's in its proper place… you know, that sort of thing. Piece of cake. Shift runs until six. Oh, and I'll leave you a phone message tonight so you can get, ah, oriented."

Something was funny about the way he said that, but Link was too bored to notice or care. "Got it," he said, stuffing the key ring into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

The man turned to leave, then paused and swiveled back around, apparently remembering something. "Say, I see you all the time at this place cleaning up after the kids, but I can never manage to catch your name."

Link, who had been reaching up to replace his earbuds, paused. "Oh. My name's Link."

"Well, thank you, Link. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah… tomorrow," Link said; he'd already stopped listening. Which was why, as he went back to mopping up greasy chip crumbs to the tune of some relaxing Aerosmith, he never heard the man murmur something as he walked away – so quietly that no one but him could hear.

"Good luck, kid."


	2. Night One (Part 1)

"Have you ever read Slaughterhouse Five?"

Zelda spoke so suddenly that Link almost swerved off the road. He cursed under his breath and guided the car back into the right lane – why was he so jumpy today? "Have I read _what_?"

"Slaughterhouse Five," Zelda said from the backseat. Link could hear the paper crinkling as she turned a page. "I'm supposed to be reading it for Classics Month in English class, but it's kind of weird. It's about this guy who thinks he was kidnapped by aliens, and he was in the war, or something like that. It's a little confusing because the author keeps jumping around."

"Oh," Link said, trying to sound genuinely interested.

As usual, she was undeceived. "I know you're not much into books. But you should really read this one."

"Who's it by?" Link asked, easing the car through a turn. He was pretty sure this was a normal question that a book lover was supposed to ask another book lover.

"Kurt Vonnegut."

"Ah," Link said, trying to sound as if the name was familiar to him.

Again, Zelda didn't buy it. "You've never heard of him, have you?"

"Is he German?" Link guessed.

"American," Zelda corrected him. "But good try."

Link chuckled.

"What are you laughing about?"

"It's just a funny name. _Vonnegut._"

Zelda gave him one of her patented You're-Being-Ridiculous looks. "What, and _Link_ isn't?"

"You're the only one at our school named Zelda," Link pointed out. "So your name's pretty weird, too." Pause. "But, you know. In a good way."

"Nice save."

Right then, a huge pickup truck whizzed past the car going well over the speed limit, a hairs-length away from clipping Link's side mirror. Link gave him a not-entirely-subtle hand signal, which the other vehicle's driver graciously returned as he sped away.

Zelda laughed. "God, you're an ass."

"Hey. It's eleven-thirty at night, and I'm driving to a job where all I have to do is sit and stare at a laptop screen for six hours straight, earning minimum wage and losing precious sleep in the process. Excuse me if I think I have a right to be a little annoyed."

"You could have turned him down," Zelda reminded him.

Link sighed. "His wife was having a baby. What was I supposed to say?"

"Maybe he was lying," Zelda said wisely.

Link gave her an exasperated look. "Do you support me or not?"

"I support you," she said, grinning. "I just don't know how much yet."

He had to smile. It was hard not to when Zelda was around. "Look, can I at least thank you for letting me borrow your car?"

"You're welcome," she said. "Although I wouldn't have minded driving."

He shrugged. "Like I said, I'm going to be sitting in a chair doing nothing for the next six hours. I need to do something now to get my blood pumping."

"Well, don't fall asleep in there. Your boss'll get annoyed."

Link was silent. Something had just occurred to him.

"What is it?" Zelda asked, craning her head to make sure he hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel.

"It's just… I can't remember if I asked Jake to tell the boss I'm working tonight."

"So what, you're going to work and Jake will get paid? That's not fair," Zelda said, looking horrified.

It was a long time before he responded. "No, it's okay. It's not a big deal. It's just for one night." Pause. "It's not like I was going to make much money, anyway."

"Well, if you're sure," Zelda said, but she still didn't look convinced.

They pulled into the parking lot of Fazbear's, and Link shut the engine off. "Well," he said, trying his best to sound nonchalant. "Guess this is it, then."

"I'll wait out here for you," Zelda said, already opening her book again. "Call me once you get inside, okay?"

"Yeah, I will," Link said, unbuckling his seatbelt. "I just have to listen to some phone message that Jake was gonna leave me, so I know what I'm supposed to be doing all night long. Then I'll call you. I promise."

She gave him a teasing smile. "Have fun being bored out of your mind."

"With pleasure," Link said, and got out of the car.

But as he was about to shut the door, Zelda said, "Wait."

Link paused. "Yeah?"

She hesitated. "It's nothing, just…"

"What?"

"I thought I saw something," she said. "In the window. Just for a second."

Nervously, Link turned and regarded the front of the pizzeria. It looked even more dilapidated than it had during the day; now he could see the peeling wallpaper, the faded posters advertising a sale that had ended six months ago, a few strands of ivy creeping up the shutters.

It looked… sad. Neglected.

But the windows – although dingy and smudged from a thousand childrens' handprints – were definitely empty. At least, he was pretty sure.

"I don't see anything," he said warily.

She shrugged. "Never mind. I'm probably just imagining things. See you at six."

"Yeah… see you."

As he jammed the keys into the lock on the front door, he couldn't help thinking that he was probably going to regret this.

**11:58 PM, NIGHT 1**

The restaurant looked empty. Which was kind of relieving, since for some reason he'd been expecting there to be dark shapes hiding in the corners, waiting to pounce the moment he opened the front door. Still, the darkness was a little unnerving as he threw a quick glance over his surroundings. He thought he remembered the door to the security office being down one of the side hallways.

He started walking, cursing himself for not bringing a flashlight. As he went, he checked his watch. The little glow-in-the-dark dial provided a steady light in the darkness; it was two minutes to midnight._ Better get going soon._

He passed a bulletin board, and lingered there for a moment to read some of the announcements. There was an ad pinned there describing the empty night guard position, with a space at the bottom that had presumably been for those little tear-off paper tabs containing the restaurant's address and phone number. All of the tabs were gone.

_Guess there's been a lot more people working this shift than I thought, _he mused. No wonder he'd seen so many of them come and go. There had been men and women alike, all different shapes and sizes, all different backgrounds. But on Friday, inevitably, they all quit. It was always the same.

At least, he was pretty sure they quit. He'd never actually seen them leave the restaurant or go into the boss's office to turn in their resignation.

Maybe something else happened to them?

He shivered. Why was he even thinking about this? He turned firmly away from the bulletin board and resumed walking down the hallway, his footsteps loud in the eerie silence hanging over the darkened restaurant.

He checked his watch again. One minute to midnight.

_CRASH._

The sound was so loud in the silence that he actually jumped, his heart giving a hard jolt in his chest as he looked around wildly for the source. Nothing had moved that he could see. It sounded like it had come from deeper inside the restaurant.

He took deep, steadying breaths, trying to calm his juttering heart. _It's okay. Something probably just fell over._

_Nothing to worry about._

He kept walking, slower this time, glancing warily around him. He remembered Zelda's voice: "I thought I saw something. In the window."

Could there be a burglar sneaking around?

The thought was oddly comforting. It made him feel a little better that the danger was from something tangible, something known and familiar, instead of something that lurked in the shadows unseen. A burglar could be dealt with. A burglar could be stopped.

He finally reached the doorway of the office, at the very end of the hallway. Looking into the tiny, cramped room, he felt another small twinge of relief. Once he got inside, he would know. He'd be able to see the burglar on the cameras. He'd call the police, and they'd come, and everything would be okay.

He smiled. What had he been worried about?

**12:02 PM, NIGHT 1**

Once inside, it didn't take long for Link to figure out what everything did. It wasn't rocket science; there was a laptop on the desk that he could use to cycle through some grainy, black-and-white camera footage, and an old phone that he assumed Jake had left him the message on. He took a moment to familiarize himself with the interface. A click of the mouse brought him to the cams on the show stage; there was another camera mounted backstage. There was also one in the kitchen, although for some reason he only had audio in that room. Maybe the camera wasn't working?

_Man, this place is old, _he thought as he flipped through the cameras. He wondered why he had never seen all the signs of neglect and age before. The dented Formica tables, the discarded pop cans and French fries that he, the janitor, had forgotten to clean up (he tried to make himself feel bad about that, but couldn't for some reason). Just as he was figuring out where the cams were situated in the west and east hallways, the phone rang.

He stopped messing around with the cameras to answer it. _Probably Jake's message. _Sure enough, Jake's voice was soon spilling through the phone's tinny speakers.

"Hey Link! I hope you've already figured out where the office is. If not, I put this thing on speakerphone before I left yesterday, so hopefully you can follow the sound of my voice. Anyway, there was a thing I was supposed to read to you – hold on –" Link heard paper crinkling; presumably the message had gotten crumpled up in Jake's pocket and he was now flattening it out on the desktop. "Okay, here it is – _Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a magical place where fun and fantasy come to life_… blah blah blah, _fun and fulfilling job_… oh, and, uh, there's some small print here saying that the restaurant is not responsible for any injury or dismemberment."

Well, that was oddly specific.

"But hey, don't worry about it, you'll be fine." Jake paused to clear his throat loudly. "Anyway, all you have to do is look at the cams. Like I told you before, remember? Just, uh, keep an eye on things, make sure everything's in its proper place. Especially check the show stage." A noticeable pause. "Um, not for any particular reason. It's just, uh… the animatronics tend to wander a bit at night."

Link, who had been fluffing out an old newspaper a previous night guard had left behind, stopped and gave the phone an incredulous look. _Wait, what?_

"They're left in some kind of roaming mode after hours. You know, so their servos don't lock up," Jake went on, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. "It's not a big deal. Just, uh, make you keep an eye on them. They might, um, wander into your office by mistake."

Oh God.

Link threw a fervent glance at the two doors leading into the security office. Both were open. He checked the show stage. There were the three animatronics, still in their proper places.

Maybe Jake had been kidding. At least, he certainly hoped so.

"If they do, um, happen to get too close for comfort, it's probably a good idea to close your doors. You see those little red buttons on the walls to your left and right? Those close the doors. The white ones turn the door lights on and off – you should use those as often as you can. So you can know if they're there, and all." Jake paused again, very noticeably. "You might not have very long to react. Not that anything bad would happen if they find you, but, you know. Just in case."

_Just in case, my ass. _Why hadn't Jake mentioned this before?

"So, yeah. That's all you have to do, really. Piece of cake." Jake laughed nervously. "Tonight should be a breeze, and I'll be back there tomorrow… probably. They might keep my wife one more night for observation." Pause. "Um… oh yeah, and remember, the building has limited power. Corporate budget cuts, you know. So don't keep those doors closed all night long, or you might find yourself defenseless later on. Not that anything bad would happen if you did." A distinct coughing sound.

_Not that anything bad would happen? _Link wanted to strangle him.

"Well, anyway, thanks for covering for me, buddy. G'night!"

There was a crackle, then a distinct click. The message was over.

Link sat there frozen, processing everything he'd just heard.

He sat there for so long that it was one o' clock by the time he finally remembered to check the cameras again. The show stage looked normal; all three animatronics were still there. Nothing had moved on any of the cameras.

Now that he thought about it, there was a little power meter in the bottom left corner. According to the dial, he had 73% power left.

_Jesus. _What had happened that so much was already gone? It wasn't like he'd been surfing the cameras that much, and he hadn't used the lights or the doors.

He looked up. There was a little fan sitting on the desk, whirring steadily. He scowled and shut it off. When he looked back down at the power percentage, it had stopped diminishing somewhat. _That's better._ But it was still too low for his liking, and it was already one o' clock. Would he have enough power to make it through the night, even if he didn't have to close any doors?

He took a slow breath, trying to relax, and checked the cameras again.

The show stage looked different now. Funny. There was Chica, there was Freddy – which one was missing? He thought there had been three before.

He looked at his watch again. One-fifteen.

He sighed. It was going to be a very long night.


	3. Night One (Part 2)

The footsteps started at two o' clock.

Link had known for a while that there was an animatronic missing from the stage, but he couldn't remember which one it was through a tidal wave of rising panic. But now he could hear soft footfalls – almost tentative, like those of a child – echoing from the left hallway.

He recovered from his frozen state long enough to remember what he was supposed to be doing: checking the cameras. He powered up the laptop again and switched to the west hallway.

There was a shadow there. A barely noticeable, blurry silhouette, but it was unmistakable in the flickering lights.

He shivered._ I hate this place._

It almost made him wonder if maybe – just maybe – the animatronics weren't so harmless after all.

But then again, maybe Jake had been right; maybe they would just wander into his office on occasion, and then wander right back out again, following whatever free-roaming track was programmed into them. Although it seemed odd to Link that they were programmed to pass through the security office during their nightly forays around the pizzeria. Wouldn't that scare the crap out of the night guard?

This thought occupied him so completely that it was a long time before he noticed the silhouette had vanished.

Staring at the feed from the empty hallway, his thoughts momentarily stalled._ Where did it go?_ He hadn't seen it move. One minute it was there, and the next…

_Thump. Thump._

Footsteps.

In a flash, Link remembered Jake's advice: shut the doors if they get too close. His hand shot out and slapped the red button; the door slammed down, cutting off his view of the outside – save the tiny slice that could be seen through the window.

_Good. That should keep it out._

He looked back down at the camera feed, taking deep breaths to steady himself. The power seemed to be draining a little faster now – maybe closing the door had something to do with it – but the robot was still nowhere to be seen.

Did the cameras have a blind spot?

Link wouldn't be surprised. Jake had sounded rather uncomfortable on the phone when he'd mentioned "using the lights frequently." Maybe the lights would show him what the cameras couldn't.

Not that Link wanted to see a deteriorating, white-eyed robot standing outside his door at – he checked his watch – two o' clock in the morning. Hopefully the thing would just go away and leave him alone before his shift ended.

More out of curiosity than anything, he pressed the white button. The light buzzed to life – revealing the distinctly bunny-shaped shadow on the wall, barely visible through the fogged window.

Well.

Damn.

He glanced nervously at the right door. Should he check there, too? Maybe another one of the animatronics had woken up to hassle him. He switched the camera feed back to the show stage. No, Freddy and Chica were still there.

He chewed his lip. What was he supposed to do now? Stay here, hunkered down in a dingy office and wait for death?

Maybe he should go outside.

He shook himself. _No. That's stupid. _At least in here, he had doors to shut and lights to turn on. Out there, he would have nothing. No defenses.

Then he briefly considered making a run for it. The boss would never know he hadn't finished his shift, since Jake was supposed to be here, not him. He still had the keys. He could just leave, lock up and no one would be any the wiser.

Of course, Zelda would probably think he was a coward.

And what if he went outside and ran right into one of those… things? He didn't have a flashlight. He hadn't brought a gun.

He laughed at himself for that last thought. As if guns or swords could hurt a robot.

He switched the left light on again. There was no shadow. Had it left?

There was only one way to find out. He took a slow breath and smacked the red button. The door slid back up, revealing the illuminated hallway. No, nothing there. _Thank God. _

He turned off the light, sat back in his chair and massaged his forehead with his thumbs. At least he would only be doing this for one night… probably. He could see why Jake had sounded so eager to get out of doing this.

…Wait. Was Jake's wife _really _having a baby?

The phone rang again, and Link jumped out of his chair, almost dropping the laptop. Another voicemail from Jake? No, it couldn't be; Jake had promised he'd leave only one. But then he heard a very different voice spilling out through the receiver, unnaturally loud in the silence. "Hello? Link?"

He'd forgotten to put it off speakerphone. He snatched the phone hurriedly off the cradle and balanced it between his shoulder and ear, cycling through the camera feeds as he spoke. "Hey, Zel."

"You didn't call me." She sounded put-out.

"Sorry. I've, uh, been a little preoccupied." Damnit, Bonnie was in the hallway again. He checked the light; it wasn't close enough for him to shut the door. Had to conserve power, after all. "Things are kind of crazy here."

"What do you mean? You said yourself that all you had to do was sit in the office –"

"Yeah, well, that was before Jake called." Link took a deep breath. "Zel, the robots _move._"

There was a long silence. For a moment Link thought she'd hung up on him, but then she finally spoke, with a note of exasperation in her voice. "They're animatronics. Aren't they technically_ designed_ to move?"

"No, I mean – they move _at night_." He shuddered. "God, Zel, I can't even tell you how stressed out I am right now –"

"Link, why are you so freaked out? Maybe someone just forgot to turn them off at the end of the day –"

"No, no, that's the thing, Zel. They don't turn them off. They let them wander arou – _shit_!" This last exclamation was because he'd just turned on the light again. Bonnie was standing _right there,_ bending down slightly as if to duck inside the office, eyes glowing strangely in the darkness –

The door slammed down. Link had barely gotten to the button in time.

"Link?"

"Sorry," he said, clenching his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. "One of them was at my door –"

The line crackled. "At your door? Why would it be outside your door? Link, what's going on –"

"I can't talk right now, Zel. I'll tell you when my shift's over – I have to focus –" He glanced at his power and barely resisted uttering a curse. He only had thirty-two percent left.

"…Okay," she said at last. "I'll see you at six."

"Yeah… at six." He put the phone down and tried to relax._ You can do this, Link._

He looked at his watch. Four o' clock, almost five. It felt like the night just kept dragging on and on – when would it end?

He cycled through the cameras a few more times, just to make sure nothing had moved. Bonnie wasn't budging, Freddy looked inactive and Chica…

…where had she gone?

He flipped wildly through the feeds. Not in the dining area, not in the hallway – there. In the girl's bathroom, peering up at the camera with hooded eyes. Link ground his teeth._ Fantastic._

If he got out of this alive, he was going to _kill _Jake.

_Thump. Thunk. Thump._

Faraway footsteps again. He shivered, gripping the sides of the laptop with white fingers. This would be so much easier to handle if they would stop making all that goddamn _noise._

He checked the light. Bonnie was still there.

"Well, you can stay there all you want," he said loudly, even though he was pretty sure the animatronic couldn't hear him. "I've got plenty of power." This was a lie; he only had seventeen percent left, and draining fast. But it felt good to be openly defying the source of his fear, the thing that lurked in the –

A booming noise shook the pizzeria, and Link jumped in his seat (again). It took him a moment to comprehend what he was hearing: somewhere far away, a grandfather clock was banging out a tune.

_Bong. Bong. Bong._

In an instant, Bonnie's shadow disappeared. _Clomp, clomp, _went the sound of clumsy animatronic footsteps, fading away down the hall.

Link stared at the empty hallway for a moment, not understanding what had happened. Why had it just… gone away?

Then he looked at his watch, and relief washed over him. It was six o' clock. He'd made it.

He wanted to run out of the office yelling his triumph. Instead he edged slowly out of the right door, just in case they hadn't left after all. But no – no odd shadows, no movements, no lights. Just that heavy, eerie silence.

Well, at least it wasn't pitch-black anymore; shafts of sunlight were filtering in from the windows now, dust mites shimmering in the air. The sun had risen.

He unlocked the door and stepped out into the light. In the back of his mind, he knew that it was over. He would never have to come back.

Right?


	4. Wires, Crossbeams and Other Such Things

Link had to call his boss, several of the pizzeria's employees and eventually hunt through the White Pages, but at long last, he had Jake's phone number. (He also discovered that Jake's last name was Richards. Man, he really had to get better at names.)

The first thing he said when the former night guard picked up was, "I'm going to _kill _you!"

On the other end, he heard Jake gave a quick, nervous laugh. "Okay, okay, settle down. I was going to tell you before you left, but –"

"Why didn't you warn me?" Link cut him off, pacing back and forth angrily across the floor of his apartment. "How could you tell me on a goddamn _voicemail_, and then not even have the decency to –"

"Wait! Please, Link, you have to let me explain –"

"This had _better_ be good." Link was normally a fairly mild-mannered guy, but right now he couldn't believe how angry he was. Jake could have said _one word_ about what Link would be facing, he could have at least offered _one_ warning…

"So I was going to tell you, all right? I was going to explain what to do at the restaurant. But you had your earbuds in, and I didn't want to bother you, and –"

"Oh, so that's it? You didn't want to bother me with news that could have prepared me for _getting hunted down by evil robots?"_

"They're not evil," Jake said quickly. "I assure you. They're just… er… confused."

"Confused," Link repeated flatly. "They're confused."

"Well, yes. I mean… it's not like they were programmed to go stand outside the office doors, scare the jeebies out of some poor night guard and then leave, you know?"

"What would have happened?" Link asked. His anger had abated somewhat, replaced by an odd, numb feeling. "If they had gotten in?"

Jake audibly hesitated. "Well… I'm not really sure, to be honest. I've never gotten, er, caught. But I imagine that if they were to find you, they would, um… well, they probably wouldn't see you as a person."

"What do you mean?" Link had a bad feeling about this.

"Well, they'd probably see you as a metal endoskeleton… without its costume on."

Oh God. Link saw where this was going.

"So they might, um, try to… forcibly stuff you into a suit." Jake paused and cleared his throat noisily. "Again, I'm not really sure. I've always been pretty good with the doors… they haven't gotten me yet."

"What would that be like?" Link asked warily. "Getting stuffed into a suit? I mean, it wouldn't exactly kill you… right?"

"Well, no. I mean, your eyes and teeth would probably poke out. But, y'know, it'd be pretty hard to breathe in there. And the suits themselves are all full of wires and crossbeams and –"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Link didn't need to know the details. "So are the doors the only way I can stop them? Is that really all I can do?"

"As far as I know, yes." Pause. "Although, you _are_ pretty young. They might mistake you for a little kid if they see you, and that would nix the whole suit-stuffing thing, because they're explicitly programmed not to harm children. But that's just a theory."

Link sighed. "Great." Yet again, he cursed himself for even taking this job. Maybe Zelda had been right; maybe he shouldn't have done this after all.

Jake was silent for a while. Then he said, "Hey, Link?"

"Yeah?"

"You probably already guessed this, but… I'm not gonna be there tomorrow night for my shift. Can you cover for me one more night?"

Link sighed. "I figured you were going to say that."

"C'mon, bud. Just one more night. Then my wife'll be good as new, we can take our new son Caelan home, and I'll go right back to working my normal shift on Wednesday."

"…Fine. One more night. But I'm not covering for you anymore after that, you hear?"

"Right," Jake said hurriedly. "Just one more. I promise."

Link massaged his scalp with his knuckles. _I can't believe I keep doing this guy favors. _"So is there anything else I should know? For getting through the night tomorrow?"

"It should be just like last night. Check the lights and the cameras, shut the doors, that sort of thing. Bonnie and Chica might be a bother, but Freddy will probably stay quiet. Unless, of course, you run out of power." Jake gave a quiet, humorless chuckle. "Don't let that happen."

"Right." Link had already figured that out for himself.

"Oh, and… there is one more thing I forgot to mention."

Link dreaded the answer, but he asked anyway. "What?"

"Well, uh, there's one animatronic that's a teensy bit different from the others."

"…What do you mean?"

"You remember that old pirate animatronic they used to have here, all those years ago? Foxy?"

"Oh, yeah. I remember that guy." Link had been there when they'd shut him down. Maybe it was because of that bite back in '87 (although, to his knowledge, no one was sure which of the animatronics had caused it) or maybe Foxy was just getting old and worn-out. Either way, the kids must have gotten bored with his tinny voice and jerky movements, because one day Link had arrived for work, and he'd just been… gone. He'd been phased out, shut away behind his curtains. Deactivated. Scrapped.

Forgotten.

Jake's voice snapped him out of his reverie. "Yeah, well, he still works."

Link blinked. "He does?"

"Yep. Only wakes up at night, though. I still haven't figured out why… as far as I know, the staff doesn't put _him _in roaming mode." A tense chuckle. "I'll have to ask the boss sometime."

That did seem pretty odd, but that wasn't Link's main concern right now. "So how is he different? What does he do?"

"Well, you didn't happen to… look at the cameras in Pirate Cove during the night, did you?"

"No, not really. Just the show stage and the hallways."

The line crackled for a moment; apparently the hospital didn't have very good reception. "Well, tomorrow night, make sure you keep an eye on the Pirate Cove feed, all right?" Jake said at length. "At least once every few minutes. Foxy gets… agitated… if you go too long without watching him. Maybe he just wants some attention after all these years of being alone."

"You talk about the robots like they're… alive. Human."

Jake was silent for a long time. Then he said,

"Don't you know, Link?"

Link blinked. "Know what?"

When Jake next spoke, his voice was flat, devoid of all emotion. Almost like a robot's.

"They _are_."

Link's blood turned to ice.

But before he could say anything in reply, there was a soft click. Jake had hung up.


	5. Night Two (Part 1)

"You're really going to do it again?"

Link groaned and dragged his hands through his hair, mussing down the already-disheveled blond spikes. "_Yes_."

Zelda stared at him incredulously from the backseat. "But… why?"

"Because Jake's an asshole, and I have to." He yanked the car keys out of the ignition. In front of them, the pizzeria loomed; just looking at it made bile rise in his throat. He forced himself to look away.

"You know, I'm really starting to think there _is _no baby," he went on. "I mean… for all I know, he's not even married."

"What I'd like to know is, why has no one come to fix those robots yet?" Zelda pointed out. "They're obviously broken. Isn't there some mechanic around here who can –"

"I don't think it's anything to do with their programming," Link broke in hurriedly. "In fact, I'm starting to think it's something else."

"What?"

"It's just… I was on the phone with Jake this morning, and… well, never mind." He shook his head, realizing how crazy he would sound if he voiced his fears out loud. "You know what? I'll be fine. They won't get me."

"I thought Jake said –"

"Yeah, well, I don't trust him," Link cut her off. "He didn't sound all that confident on the phone."

Zelda sighed. "Link?"

"Yes?"

"Don't you think it's too dangerous to go alone?"

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "I've got the hang of this now. They won't get in."

She shook her head and opened her book again. "Well, if you're sure. Do you want me to call you once you're in the office?"

"No, that'll just distract me. Besides, I bet Jake will have left me another message." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to motivate himself to get out of the car.

Zelda seemed to know what he was thinking. She unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned forward; Link felt her hand come to rest on his shoulder. "Listen, Link. You don't have to do this."

He shook his head numbly and pushed her hand away. "I have to," he said. "It's the only way."

Zelda watched him thoughtfully as he got out of the car.

**12:18 AM, NIGHT 2**

Jake did not sound nearly as confident as he had the night before. "Hey, Link," came his tentative voice through the speakers. "Listen – I'm sorry I made you do this again."

"Yeah, well, it's too late to apologize now," Link said aloud, even though he knew it was just a voicemail and Jake wouldn't be able to hear him.

"Just as a side note, you should probably check the cameras while I'm talking. Freddy and his friends do tend to get a little more… active as the week goes on."

Oh. Well, that was good to know. Link powered on the laptop and checked the show stage. Sure enough, Bonnie was already missing. _Damnit._

"Anyway, you remember what I told you about Foxy? Like I said before, make sure you keep an eye on him. He's a bit, ah, twitchy."

Right – he needed to do that too. Link checked the camera mounted in the defunct Cove. The curtain hadn't moved. Maybe Foxy wouldn't be bothering him tonight after all?

"And he moves quite a bit faster than the other animatronics… er, so if you happen to see him coming towards you, I'd shut your doors as quickly as you can. Don't want to take any chances, you know. Not after the bite of '87." Jake laughed humorlessly. "You want to keep your frontal lobe, I'm sure."

What?

"But I know you won't have any problems. I mean, hey – you're a pro at this, right? I'll see you tomorrow morning, buddy. And I won't make you do this again. I promise."

Link was sure that this was Jake's parting message, that he was going to hang up. But, oddly, he didn't. The line kept buzzing, as though he had just taken a breath and was going to start talking again.

A little curious despite himself, Link picked up the phone.

The line fizzed and murmured for a while, as if there was some kind of radio interference. But there was nothing on the other end. Maybe Jake had just forgotten to hang up.

But then, just as Link was about to put the phone down, a slow, deliberate voice spoke into his ear, one that made the hairs stand up on the back of Link's neck.

"_We live_."

Click.

**1:38 AM, NIGHT 2**

The door shut on Bonnie's face, almost shearing off the robot's nose. "Ha," Link said triumphantly. "Not going to get me this time." He checked Pirate's Cove; the curtain still hadn't moved. Why wasn't Foxy doing anything? Well, maybe that was a good thing. It wasn't like he w_anted _Foxy to get "agitated," as Jake had called it.

He flipped back to the show stage. Freddy still hadn't moved.

Maybe he wouldn't move at all? But Jake had said that a_ll _the robots had a free roaming mode. So why wasn't Freddy budging from the stage?

He was so absorbed in this thought that he almost didn't hear the footsteps.

Link moved so fast that he almost fell out of his chair: he whirled and slammed the right door button. The door crashed down before Link even saw if anyone was there or not. As far as he knew, Bonnie only attacked from the left side (he wondered why, but was too afraid to ask), so it must have been Chica._ Figures._

He threw a fleeting glance at the timestamp on the camera feed, then at his power; he had less than he liked, but hopefully it would be enough to last the night –

"_Dum, de-dum-dum_."

Link's heart jumped. It was a moment before he realized the soft, distinctly shanty-like sound was coming from the laptop's speakers, not from inside his office as he'd momentarily feared. He switched to the Pirate Cove feed. That was where the noise was coming from…

Wait. Was that Foxy?

A furry head was peeking out from the curtains, jaw dangling open as though broken. Link shuddered at the sight of its jagged teeth. Why would anyone in their right mind give a children's animatronic such sharp teeth? No wonder Foxy been shut down for safety reasons.

He checked the left light; Bonnie had meandered away again, so he felt (almost) safe opening the door. Then he checked the right door light. Chica leered at him from the window, her mouth gaping. _Go away, _he thought irritably, and turned back to his computer. By this point, most of the animatronics had ceased to terrify him. _Most_ of them.

He glanced at his power. Shit – it was draining fast. Would he last the night? He didn't think so.

What would happen if it ran out?

Jake had given only cryptic warnings as to Link's fate if he wasted too much power. Would the animatronics finally be able to get in, and he would meet with his inevitable, suffocating-to-death-inside-a-smelly-robot-suit fate? Could he possibly run out of the office and escape before they got to him?

The thought both intrigued and terrified him at the same time. Maybe he_ could_ run faster than the robots. They were pretty big and clumsy, after all… but he'd cross that bridge when he got to it. He still had some time.

More to distract himself than anything, he checked on Foxy one more time. The animatronic hadn't moved much, but Link thought he might have edged a little farther out of his curtain. Or was that just his imagination?

He gritted his teeth. He hated this place and everything about it. Tomorrow morning he was going to have a serious talk with the management about his limited power. Was it really due to corporate budget cuts, or was it a more sinister scheme?

The thought disturbed him, that they might have limited his electricity usage on purpose. Was this all some grand deception that he didn't know about? Was the boss secretly plotting to kill every night guard who was stupid enough to take the position?

And then came the most terrifying thought of all.

Were the animatronics _really_ in free roaming mode?

_Whrrr._

Link jumped for at least the third time that night. But yet again, the office was empty and he was (mostly) sure he was safe. So it wasn't something that required his immediate attention.

Still… he'd never heard _that _sound before. It sounded like a tired old motor whirring to life, somewhere in the distance. Was Freddy finally turning on?

Or maybe it was just the air conditioning system, and he was overreacting.

Just to be sure, he checked the show stage. Freddy was still there.

He flipped around the cameras one more time. Bonnie was hanging out backstage (God knew why), Chica was still outside his door (why wouldn't she just _leave_?) and Foxy was still peeking out of his curtains, his mouth open to display rows of hideously sharp teeth. Nothing – or perhaps he should say no one – had moved.

So what had that noise been?

It reminded him of that loud crash he'd heard on the first night. Just another unexplainable noise.

He sighed. This place had so many mysteries.

**4:59 AM, NIGHT 2**

Link hadn't checked Foxy in a while. He was counting on the defunct animatronic to stay put while he cycled through the rest of the cameras, trying his best to conserve what little power he had left.

But he knew with horrible certainty that nine percent would not last him the rest of the night.

Now it was eight percent.

_Oh God, I'm not going to make it._

Seven percent.

He checked the right door light.

Six percent.

He opened the right door.

Five percent.

Checked the left door light.

Four percent.

Almost shut off the laptop, but thought better of it.

Three percent.

He felt a cold bead of sweat run down the back of his shirt. He swallowed hard. _I can do this. I can make it –_

He glanced at the west hallway feed, expecting it to be empty – and saw a blur of motion. It took him a second to understand what he was seeing.

Foxy was _running._

Straight towards him.

Every nerve and muscle in him exploded with adrenaline. He actually jumped out of his chair and slammed the door button with his fist – the door dropped, and just in time.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

_Whrrrrrrrrrrrr._

The lights flickered out. The laptop died. Everything went quiet.

Link stood frozen, one hand still on the door button. It felt as though his entire train of thought had stalled.

_Don't move, s_uggested a tiny part of his brain. _Maybe it'll think you're an empty costume._

_Run, you idiot, _screamed a slightly more intelligent part of his brain.

_Sit down, _offered another voice, one that sounded suspiciously like Zelda's. _Try to look nonthreatening._

He chose the third option and sat down – he'd rather be in his chair than standing by the door like an idiot – and almost immediately heard the footsteps.

Listening for footsteps, he had learned, was a major part of surviving the night. You might not see the animatronics coming on the cameras, but you could certainly hear them, and Link's hearing had always been sharper than most.

But these weren't the slow, shuffling footsteps of Bonnie or the dainty, tip-tapping footsteps of Chica. These were loud and heavy, almost as if a giant was stomping down the hallway.

Link sat motionless. Still as a statue.

_Don't… move._

Music rang out, getting steadily closer to him. Link recognized it immediately; he used to have a music box that played that song. But somehow, this rendition was more… sinister. Purposefully stopping and slowing down as it neared him, scraping against his nerves with every measure. As if to drive it home that he had lost.

There was nothing left to do. He closed his eyes and waited for death.

The music stopped.


	6. Night Two (Part 2)

Transcript

Call from xxx-xxx-xxxx to xxx-xxx-xxxx at 10:34 PM Tuesday, November x, 19xx

Call begins.

_"Good morning, Jake. Wasn't expecting you to call."_

_"Yeah, hey boss – listen, I've got some news."_

_"Mm?"_

_"You know that janitor kid? The one who works Mondays and Fridays?"_

_"…Oh yes. What was his name? Lincoln something?"_

_"Link, sir. I got him to cover the night shifts for the past few days."_

_"Mmm. Good job."_

_"That's what you wanted, right boss?"_

_"…Yes, yes, well done, Mr. Richards. So the boy is working tonight?"_

_"I can probably convince him to work the rest of the week, sir. He's a pretty gullible kid. Believed that story about my wife like it was the Gospel."_

_"Ah. Good."_

_"…Sir?"_

_"Mm-hm?"_

_"Why did you tell me to put _him_ on night watch exclusively? Out of everyone else who works here? I mean, it's not like he's a particularly good employee or anything…"_

_"Why do you ask?"_

_"It just seems… I don't know… odd."_

_"Well Mr. Richards, surely you've been working here long enough to know that this is a very odd sort of place."_

_"I know that, sir. I just didn't take you for an odd sort of boss."_

_"…Hmph, you're a funny one, Richards. I suppose since you're in my confidence already, it wouldn't hurt to tell you a little more."_

_"So you'll tell me, then, sir? About why you've taken a fancy to that boy?"_

_"Not everything, of course. Even the walls have ears."_

[[There's a pause. Paper can be heard crinkling in the background.]]

_"…Sir?"_

_"There's something very special about that boy, Mr. Richards."_

_"What do you mean, sir?"_

[[There's a crackle, and most of the reply is cut off.]]

_"…ears, Richards?"_

_"Sorry, sir, I didn't catch that."_

_"I said, have you ever looked at his ears?"_

_"Well… no, actually. His hair kind of covers them up most of the time. Plus he's always got those earbuds in…"_

_"Well, next time you see him – if there is a next time – I want you to take a look."_

_"…What does this have to do with him being special, sir?"_

_"As far as you know, nothing. But I want you to look anyway."_

_"Okay, sir…"_

_"And you'd better make sure he doesn't make it through the week."_

_"…But sir, you promised me they wouldn't hurt him…"_

_"I know what I said. I _lied, _Richards, can't you see that? Now be a good employee, go in the back room tonight and look in the suits. If he's all taken care of, then we'll talk. I trust you remember our deal."_

_"…"_

_"Are you with me or against me, Richards?"_

_"…With you, Mr. Ganon. As always."_

_"Good. Now get back to work."_

Call ends.

...

The shredder whirred happily as he dropped the printed transcript into it. He watched as it was systematically broken down first into long, thin strips, then cut into tiny, illegible squares, which fluttered down to rest in the bottom of the bin. Good. That was taken care of. He always printed out his phone conversations to read, just to make sure he hadn't given away anything incriminating, but to not destroy the evidence afterward was foolish.

And he was no fool.

He turned back to the manila folder lying open on his desk. There sat Link's file, complete with the conspicuous question marks in the "last name" blank and the careless scribble of a signature. He snorted. The boy barely knew how to write English, it seemed.

_The one boy who could destroy everything he'd built..._

He shook himself. No. He would not think these thoughts. The boy would have run out of power and gotten torn to satisfyingly gory shreds last night, he was sure of it. He would never have to worry about him again.

Today was a good day.

He closed the file - it wouldn't do to have things like that lying around - and inserted it gingerly back into an open drawer of his file cabinet. He shut it with a decisive _clang_. There. Just another thing to shut away in the dark. He sighed, imagining all the trouble of writing up a missing persons report for this boy, bearing the full scrutiny of the law once more. It reminded him of a day a few years back -

An urgent knock on the door.

He looked up. "Enter."

The door opened. His heart sank.

It was Richards. His face was white as the newly fallen snow outside.

"It's Link, sir. He's alive."

The recipient of this news ground his teeth, fighting to stay calm. He had been so sure -

"Is he working tomorrow?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as level as possible.

"I don't know, sir. I haven't called him yet -"

"Call him!" he barked. Jake jumped, cowering instinctively.

"Yessir -" The big man fumbled around in his pockets for a moment, finally emerging with a cell phone. He punched in a few numbers and put it to his ear.

His boss waited, drumming his fingers on the desk.

A few tense minutes passed before Jake finally shut the phone. "He's not picking up."

Ah. So there was some hope after all.

"Well," his employer said, projecting an air of easy calm. "Keep trying. He'll answer eventually, and then it'll be your job to convince him that he absolutely _has _to take on your shift a while longer."

Jake nodded vigorously. "Yes, sir. And, sir?"

"Mm-hm?" he said absentmindedly, already tuning the portly man out.

"Er - the day shift workers have started complaining, sir. They're saying that the robots are refusing to sing and dance."

"Oh. Well, get someone down here to look at their chips. Replace them, if need be. You need to be on top of this, Richards - you're the head guard, remember?"

"Yes, sir, I understand," Richards said, looking suitably abashed. "I'll get right on it."

"Oh, and Richards?" his employer asked, as the man was turning to leave.

Jake swiveled around. "Yes, sir?"

"Don't go poking around where you aren't supposed to. Some doors should stay closed."

The big man swallowed. "Of course, sir."

His employer waved a hand. "Go on, then. Leave me in peace."

Jake scurried out. With a soft laugh, the other man returned to filing his paperwork - or rather, shredding it. That machine had gotten a lot of use over the years. Especially now that he was destroying so many employee files on a daily basis.

Almost idly, he looked up at his calendar. There were red X's drawn in all over; a few on Tuesdays, some on Wednesdays, a large number on Thursdays. But never Fridays. They never lasted that long. Not since...

He shook himself again. He needed to stop being so sentimental.

Turning decisively away, he began shuffling papers again. His gaze drifted to the telephone sitting on his desk. Maybe he could call Wolf, get him to decrease the amount of power the boy would have on the third night.

But no. That would be cheating.

He laughed as he shredded another file. The paper went in slowly, only part of a printed name visible before it was torn to pieces - _midt._

Yes, today was a good day.


	7. Dark Truths

"Link, are you feeling all right?"

"Gahh!" He jumped, nearly sending his glass of milk flying.

"Sorry – did I scare you?" Seeing his distress, Zelda hurriedly took a step backward. "I didn't mean to."

Taking deep, steadying breaths, Link sat on his hands to keep them from shaking. Ever since last night he'd been far jumpier than usual – as if some tiny part of him expected there to be sentient animatronics lurking around every corner, waiting to jump him the moment he let his guard down. He'd actually swerved off the road on the way home when a bird flew in front of his windshield.

"I'm fine," he said, even though he wasn't. He took another drink of milk so he wouldn't have to say anything else.

Zelda put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Are you sure?"

"Mm-hm," he said tightly. He shot an accusing glance around his apartment, looking for shadows, lights, anything out of place. Nothing. It was the third (fourth?) time he'd checked today.

He chewed his lip anxiously. Why was he so paranoid? It wasn't like those things were very stealthy – their servos juttered loudly when they moved, and their footsteps were loud and unsteady, as if they were perpetually off balance.

Besides, he would never have to go back there again. He was done. He planned to resign from his janitor position in the morning (he couldn't even_ look_ at the damn things anymore without internally flinching away), give his keys back to Richards and – well, he wasn't sure what he'd do after that. But he'd figure something out.

Zelda traced a knot in the wood of the table, lost in thought. Link noticed there was a book tucked under her arm, the same book she'd been reading a few days ago for English class. What was it called again? Slaughterhouse Five?

Noticing the direction of his gaze, Zelda said, "It's very good. You should read it."

"What's it about again?"

"I told you what it was about a couple days ago, in the car," Zelda said, with a laugh in her voice. "Remember?"

"Oh... right."

"Here," Zelda said, offering him the book. "I have another copy at home."

"Thanks," he said grudgingly, taking it. He wasn't normally a book-ish type of person, but if it made Zelda happy, he would give it a try.

He was just starting on the first chapter when his cell phone buzzed against his thigh.

_Damnit. _He already knew who would be calling.

"Mind if I get this?" he asked Zelda, trying to keep his voice as level as possible.

She shrugged. "Go ahead."

Link flipped open his phone with his thumb. "Yeah?"

"Heya Link!" The voice sounded far too bright to be natural.

Link wanted to throw the phone at the floor. Instead he said flatly, "What the hell do you want, Jake?"

"Er, so my wife finally got released from the hospital –"

"Oh, that's so great. Good for you." The sarcasm in his voice was audible.

Apparently Jake heard it, too. "Um, yeah. Listen… the thing is…"

"You can't report to your shift for some reason, and I have to cover again," Link deadpanned.

"Well, no, that's not exactly – um –"

"Listen, Jake. I'm done, okay? You can't make me go back there."

"I know, Link. That's not what I'm asking. I, um…"

"Yeah?"

"…What happened last night?"

Link was silent for a while. "Why do you ask?"

"I dunno, it's just… the robots are acting funny during the day. Keep shutting off when we don't want them to. Especially Freddy – one of his arms got bent a little funny, and we can't get it to move right. You know how that happened?"

Link chewed his lip. "…No."

"Well, it's probably nothing to worry about. We called in a repairman to replace their chips, so they should be fine now."

Link frowned. "As in, they won't get all murderous on me at night anymore?"

"Presumably." Jake chuckled, a little nervously. "You – I mean, I – should be just fine at night from now on."

Link was silent.

"Anyway," Jake went on, "I told the boss you covered my shifts, so you should be getting your check in the mail pretty soon. Won't be much, since you only worked two nights, but…"

"I'll do it."

Jake paused. He seemed confused. "What?"

"I'll cover for you again," Link said.

"…Really?"

"I mean… if you're right, and replacing the chips will make them normal again, then I won't have anything to worry about, right?"

"Uh… no. No, I guess you won't." Jake sounded relieved. "Yeah. Thanks, Link. This means a lot."

In reality, Link was pretty sure that 'replacing the chips' wouldn't help. No, there was a _very_ different reason he had made up his mind to go back to that place. But first, he needed some answers.

"I've been meaning to ask you something, though."

"Fire away," Jake said.

"Have you ever looked at the animatronics up close?"

"What?"

"I mean – have you ever gone right up to them, looked at them up close and personal?"

"Er, no… the employees have been instructed _not t_o do that, actually."

"Why?" Link said quickly.

"Well… this is all corporate stuff, mind you. I'm not the one you should be…"

"But you're the head guard."

"Well, yes," Jake said, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. "That's true. But I still don't think…"

"Are you afraid the bite of '87 will happen again?"

"Well, no –"

"Or are you trying to hide something?"

"What? No! There's nothing to hide, I assure you – they're perfectly safe during the day –"

"Jake, I have gone around asking every employee in that building about the animatronics, and I know –"

"Know what?" Jake asked quickly.

Link dropped his bombshell.

"I know that _no one puts them in free roaming mode at night_."

Silence.

For a moment Link thought Jake had hung up. But then, slowly, with extreme reluctance, he spoke.

"So why are you going back, then? Now that you know the truth?"

"I don't know the truth," Link said. "Not even close. But I want to find out."

"Some doors should stay closed, kid," Jake said quietly. "Watch where you tread from now on."

"Don't worry, I will."

Before Link could hang up, Jake said, "Kid?"

"Yeah?"

"Freddy's bent arm. That wasn't just a locked servo, was it?"

Link smiled.

"No. No, it wasn't."


	8. Night Three (Part 1)

**11:54 PM, NIGHT 3**

"_It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is…"_

Link shuddered and closed the book. Slaughterhouse Five was just as disturbing as its title suggested. Why was Zelda so into these kinds of things?

He set the book down on his desk and checked his watch. Almost midnight.

Well, at least he had some time to calm his nerves before the animatronics powered on. He sat back in his chair (it creaked dangerously under his weight) and put his feet up on the desk; in the process, his sneaker bumped against a manila folder sitting on the tabletop.

Wait. What was that doing there?

Link sat back up again, heart pounding. He couldn't remember there ever being a folder on this desk – greasy burrito wrappers and pop cans from previous night guards, certainly. But never a folder. Surely he would have noticed it before now.

Who – or, he thought with a sudden chill, _what_ – had put it there?

Tentatively, as if afraid it would explode the moment he touched it, he picked it up and opened it.

The longer Link studied the folder's contents, the more confused he became. There were photocopies of neatly typed police reports, carrying a variety of dates – 1987, 1979, 1982. There were photographs, varying from grainy, black-and-white shots of childrens' faces to blurry Polaroids of the pizzeria's exterior. Bewildered, Link flipped back and started to read one of the reports, the one with the earliest date – around ten years ago.

As he read, a creeping horror overtook him. The report detailed the disappearance of five children – one after the other, in the same week. The photographs stapled to this one were the smiling faces, most likely school pictures, of the missing children. They couldn't have been older than six or seven.

Trembling, Link read the next report.

He soon recognized the story from what Jake had said over the phone, a few days ago – this was the legendary bite of '87. The report was surprisingly vague, never mentioning the name of the bitten child and lightly skimming over what had actually happened. He looked at the name of the officer who'd written it. Some guy named P.T. Cole.

He didn't dare look at the photographs on this one – instead, he flipped to the last police report. This one had been photocopied crookedly, so that some of the words were cut off, but enough of it was readable for Link to get the gist.

It was a missing persons report for one of the restaurant's previous night guards, an oddly familiar-looking girl named Malo (maybe she had been in Link's algebra class? He wasn't sure). Looking at it, Link had to wonder how many of these missing guards there had been over the years – surely the pizzeria would have come under more thorough investigation by now? But no. Yet again, the report was vague and hastily written, and below it was the same name: P.T. Cole.

Come to think of it – and Link flipped back a few pages just to make sure – _all _of the reports were written by P.T. Cole. Who was this guy, anyway? A dirty cop being paid to make these incidents disappear?

And how had all of this (presumably) confidential information gotten into a folder on Link's desk?

Something didn't add up. Link started to close the folder, and it was only then that he noticed the yellow Post-It note stuck to the inside cover.

On it - in large, shaky letters, as though written by a child - was a single word.

_REMEMBER._

Link rubbed his thumb on the word and looked at his finger. A waxy, flaking substance. Crayon.

He was still staring at the note when the phone rang.

Link hastily put the folder down. He half-wondered why Jake would be leaving him another phone message so late in the week; after all, hadn't Link already learned everything he needed to know about defending himself from the Fazbear crew? Check the lights, close the doors, look at Foxy. It was simple enough.

He laughed at himself then. _Simple, my ass._

"Hey pal," came Jake's voice, sounding a little more tense than usual. "Listen – I'm going to make this quick. Things are going to get real tonight, and if you're not ready, well… But you should be fine. I mean – they came in and replaced the animatronics' chips today, like I said. So their, ah, quirkiness should be all ironed out." Pause. "...Hopefully."

Gee, that didn't sound suspicious and uncomfortable at all.

"Anyway, I wanted to tell you something. I forgot to mention this the other day, but… ah, if you happen to see anything…_ unusual_ tonight, just don't panic. You'll be fine as long as you keep the doors shut and your eyes open. Okay?"

Link frowned. There was something about the way he'd said that.

Almost as if he knew something that Link didn't.

"But that's enough from me – your shift'll start soon. So, uh, just remember what I said, okay? I'll, um… I'll see you tomorrow." Click.

Okay, that was definitely strange. Why did Jake sound so uncomfortable? All those awkward references to seeing him tomorrow and staying safe.

But Link didn't have any more time to wonder, because it was just then that his watch beeped.

Midnight had arrived.

**1:23 AM, NIGHT 3**

The light flickered on, and there stood Bonnie, leering. "Leave me the hell alone!" Link snarled, dropping the door in its face. He glanced at the laptop screen, where the camera feed from Pirate's Cove glowed steadily – the curtain hadn't moved.

Good. He'd learned his lesson about how much power Foxy could take from him just by knocking on his door (although he still wasn't sure why, or how, it did it).

Link swiveled in his chair and checked the right door light. If Chica was there, she was doing a very good job of blending in with the wallpaper. Still, he tentatively poked his head out of the door to make sure the hallway was empty.

Nothing. _Thank God_.

The animatronics had been relatively tame tonight - if "tame" translated to not jumping down his throat at every opportunity – and that made Link nervous. It was almost as if they were waiting for something to happen, some horrible thing that would throw Link off his game and finally drive him over the edge.

He forced down a wave of nausea and cycled through the cameras. Dining area looked normal, bathrooms were empty, stage was empty, backstage was –

Wait.

Link checked the stage again, his heart jumping into his mouth.

No.

_This is not happening. This is not happening this isnothappeningthisisnothappening…_

Freddy was gone.

Link's mouth went dry. What did that mean? He knew Bonnie and Chica's patterns pretty well, but he had no idea what Freddy did, or how long it would take him to get to Link's office. Would he copy Bonnie and tiptoe down the left hallway, throwing haughty glares at the cameras just to remind the terrified night guard that he was there? Or would he come down the right hallway and coordinate attacks with Chica?

What if he could attack from both directions?

Link shivered. The uncertainty was killing him. He had to figure out Freddy's pattern and plan for it. It was the only way he'd get through the night.

It didn't take him long to locate the missing animatronic – two white pinpricks glowed in the back of the dining area, like fireflies. Well, at least he was nowhere near the office. Although Link had learned from experience that the robots' movements didn't always follow specific rules; Bonnie could jump directly from the stage to the left hallway without Link ever being able to catch him on the cameras.

Taking deep breaths and trying to relax, Link flipped to Pirate's Cove. Clearly Foxy was getting annoyed at Link's failure to monitor him; the animatronic glowered at him from a gap in the curtain. "Stay in there, you sonuvabitch," Link muttered, checking the left hallway. Bonnie was nowhere to be found; presumably he was still hanging outside Link's door, the creepy son of a –

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Link froze. For a moment he thought Foxy had knocked on the door again. But no; the animatronic hadn't moved. Then he realized it was the sound of footsteps coming down the right hallway.

At first Link assumed it was Chica. But a quick glance at the camera feeds confirmed that the chicken animatronic was in the bathroom.

So that meant…

Link's hand shot out and smacked the white button. Plastic eyes, bricklike teeth, brown fur was illuminated in a blaze of light – Freddy was bending down to peer into Link's office, a fake plastic grin plastered across his furry face.

Link's heart dropped into his stomach.

Freddy's voice box crackled.

"_It's me_…"


	9. Night Three (Part 2)

**2:34 AM, NIGHT 3**

Link never saw it coming.

One second he was sitting frozen in his chair, Freddy looming over him like a malevolent shadow – the next he was sprawled on the ground, his head exploding with pain. Bugs of light clouded his vision, almost obscuring the grinning face of the animatronic as it moved in for the kill.

Link's mind reeled. He needed a weapon, a shield, _something_ to put between him and the malfunctioning robot – in his panic, his eyes alighted upon his trusty swivel chair, the only thing keeping Freddy at bay.

He kicked at one of its legs, and it shot forward, striking Freddy squarely in his plush belly. The animatronic stumbled awkwardly backwards, his big frame silhouetted in the doorway he had come in from – Link pushed himself hard off the ground and lunged forward, one hand coming to rest on the angry red light of the door button.

Their eyes locked. For a split second, Freddy's cold, furious gaze drilled into Link's.

Link smiled.

"Go to hell."

His hand slammed down on the button, and the door shut. Freddy vanished behind a six-inch-thick slab of solid metal.

Breathing hard, Link slumped back into his chair. He touched his forehead and looked at his hand. Blood.

A delirious laugh escaped his throat, half-terrified and half-relieved. He was alive.

He turned back to his camera feeds, still marveling at this incredible thing – this_ impossible_ life still within him.

**3:29 AM, NIGHT 3**

Freddy hadn't budged from the east hallway since two o' clock.

But Link wasn't worried. He had plenty of power, Foxy hadn't knocked once, and the only animatronic he still had to worry about – Bonnie – was being relatively docile now. As if sensing that Link had bested his leader.

All things considered, Link was starting to feel tentatively optimistic about his chances of survival.

"I'm getting pretty good at this," he said aloud, even though only the spiders could hear him.

_That, and the ghosts._

The thought was unwelcome and unpleasant, and Link hurriedly pushed it aside – where had _that_ idea come from?

He cycled through the cameras one more time. There was Freddy, there was Chica (hiding in the bathroom again, the coward), there was Bonnie silhouetted in the west hallway, there was Foxy. Everything – or perhaps he should say every_one_ – was in their proper place.

He laughed. This was going to be easy.

**3:48 AM, NIGHT 3**

"Can I do it yet, boss?"

"No," came Ganon's sharp reprimand. "Not yet. We've stacked the deck enough already."

Wolf gave a crooked smile. "I thought you didn't like playing by the rules, boss."

Ganon sighed, his fingers tightening on the back of Wolf's chair. "True. But I want to make him squirm before I end him."

There was a short pause. Wolf's finger hovered over a key, then fell back into his lap; clearly he'd been considering throwing a new wrench into the boy's plans. The soft light from the computer screen filled Wolf's basement – a makeshift base of operations, created hastily when Ganon had called on an old friend to make Link's next night a little more… interesting.

It gave Ganon a kind of malicious glee, to think that his ever-faithful programmer was about to change the game. Night after night that boy - what was his name again? Liam, or something - had infuriated Ganon to no end. He'd outwitted all of the animatronics and (somewhat) successfully conserved his power at every turn. But now, he would pay. He would pay for his sins.

And Ganon knew it would have to be tonight. Before that kid figured out who he really was.

"Hey, boss?" Wolf said, snapping Ganon out of his thoughts.

"Mm-hm?"

"Why's this kid so different from the others? Why do you want to kill him so badly?"

"It is not your place to ask questions," Ganon said sharply.

Wolf shrugged carelessly. "Just asking, boss."

There was a long silence, in which the only sound was the soft _click-clack _of Wolf's keyboard as he cycled through the cameras – pausing only briefly to survey the confidential, closed-circuit feeds in the kitchen and the office. Finally, to Ganon's annoyance, Wolf spoke again.

"Hey, it's funny, but – his ears, boss. They look like yours."

"Shut your impudent mouth," Ganon said, biting off the end of his words as though each and every one was distasteful.

Wolf grinned, sensing he had plucked a nerve. "Just making an observation."

"Just shut up and do your job," Ganon muttered.

Wolf's fingers flew as he typed in a new block of code.

_{_

_var powerMeter = .25; waitTime = 0;_

_shutOffCams; Num = all;_

_exec directConnect; numAnimConnect = 4;_

Wolf hesitated only briefly before adding the next, utterly evil lines:

_var freddyAI = 20;_

_var bonnieAI = 20;_

_var chicaAI = 20;_

_var foxyAI = 20;_

_execute all_

_}_

He sat back, grimly satisfied. "There. That'll get rid of him once and for all."

"Good," Ganon said. "Do it."

Wolf's finger hovered over the button. "…You sure we should be doing this, boss?" Before, he would never have thought to question his boss's orders. He just did what he was told, when he was told to do it. But this… this was dastardly. No, even worse.

This was pure evil.

"Are you questioning my orders?" Ganon said, in a low, dangerous voice.

Wolf swallowed and shook his head. "No, sir."

"Then do it!"

Wolf closed his eyes.

_God forgive me._

He pressed the button.

**3:52 AM, NIGHT 3**

Link could sense it almost immediately, that something had changed. One minute, everything seemed normal; the next, it went horribly wrong.

His power dropped from a solid forty percent to a somewhat alarming twenty-five percent, prompting the lights to flicker dangerously. The cameras went out.

And somewhere far away, ancient servos whirred to life as the animatronics received new orders.

Link had a bad feeling about this. He smacked the laptop screen, trying to get the feed back, but nothing. Not even the Pirate Cove feed worked.

_Oh God no. Please no._

Footsteps echoed down the left hallway – _fast _footsteps, getting closer at an alarming rate. Link didn't have to think – he automatically lunged out of his chair and punched the button. The door fell down just in time; Link thought he saw a flicker of light from Bonnie's nose just before it closed.

He sat back in his chair, breathing hard. What was going on? Why had Bonnie suddenly become so aggressive?

As if on cue, there came a scuffling sound from the right hallway. Link didn't want to look, but he turned on the light anyway; sure enough, Chica leered at him from the window, her mouth hanging open as though to take a bite out of the glass. Somehow she'd gotten all the way here from the bathroom in under ten seconds.

_What the hell? _It seemed like they were all attacking at once. But they'd never been so aggressive before, not since his little scuffle with Freddy on Tuesday night –

An earsplitting screech rent the air. It took a moment for Link to understand what the sound was: it was Foxy's hook scraping against the door. Apparently he'd gotten tired of just coming by occasionally to knock.

Now he wanted in.

Sweating, Link glanced at his power. Oh God, he would never make it with both doors closed. But they were all _right outside_ – what was he supposed to do? Sit here and wait to be massacred when the power ran out?

At last, he understood why Jake had sounded so nervous on the phone. He knew. He had known something –

Suddenly, it was as if a switch had been flipped in Link's brain.

Jake's anxiety and secretive behavior around Link. Knowing what happened to night guards who didn't finish their shift, even though he said himself that _he'd never gotten caught_. Stuttering and sweating whenever Link brought up his duties as head guard.

_Jake's in on something._

But what?

Slowly, Link turned back to the manila folder sitting on his desk, ignoring the pounding and screeching coming from the outside. He nudged it open with a finger; then he flipped to the report detailing the disappearance of the five children.

His eyes flicked over the page, searching for key phrases. _Suspect was apprehended. Bodies were never found._

His memory flew back to a few years ago, when he remembered the restaurant getting slapped with a fine by a health inspector. What had that been for again? Something about the animatronics, he was sure of it. In fact, it had almost gotten the place closed down.

Wait… now he remembered. His mind flashed back to an article he'd seen in the paper – _parents reportedly noticed blood and mucus around the eyes and mouths of the animatronics._ And there had been another comment, something about _reanimated corpses._

Yet the pizzeria had never been formally charged with a crime. The whole incident – actually, _all_ of the incidents – had just… disappeared. Vanished into the depths of the legal system in a polite, unassuming way. Just another cold case.

Link's mind began to churn, putting the pieces together.

_Bodies were never found._

_Blood and mucus._

_Reanimated corpses._

_"Roaming mode."_

Oh God.

If this meant what he thought it meant…

And then a new thought occurred to him – one that was even more disturbing than the last.

He slowly turned. Ever since Night One, there had been a cupcake sitting on his desk. He'd always been slightly disturbed by it, because of its cold, staring eyes – much like those of the animatronics. But now he had to wonder…

He picked it up and turned it over. On the base was a tiny panel – one that was clearly designed to accept batteries.

Could it really be that simple…?

He held the cupcake up at eye level, put his face right up to what he had very good reason to suspect was a camera.

And he said, very calmly, "I know what you did."

He waited. Nothing. The animatronics were still banging, the doors were still holding (barely), the lights were still on.

"You're all in cahoots," he went on, even though, for all he knew, he could have been talking to no one. "All of you. Something happened here a few years back, didn't it? Something that no one talks about."

Pause.

"Something that _you did._"

There was a long pause. For a moment Link was sure that he'd been wrong – that there wasn't a conspiracy after all, that he was just overreacting.

But then he realized that everything had gone silent. The knocking on the door had stopped.

So someone was listening after all.

"The robots," Link went on, growing more and more confident in himself with every word. "They were people once, weren't they? Little kids."

He waited only a moment before finishing his thought, these words of ultimate condemnation.

"And _you killed them._"

Silence.

Link waited. He wasn't sure exactly what he was waiting for – maybe watching for the lights to flicker, or for the animatronics to come back and finish him off. Some kind of sign that they – whoever "they" were – had heard him.

And then, to Link's mixed astonishment and confusion, he heard the bonging of a very familiar grandfather clock, somewhere far away.

Six o' clock had arrived.

Link slowly put the cupcake down. Maybe that meant he was free. Maybe they hadn't heard him after all; maybe it was just a fluke that the animatronics had left him alone -

A crackling voice broke through the darkness. "Listen here, you little _shit._"

It took Link a moment to understand where it was coming from – the speakers sitting on top of his desk. Bewildered, he scooted his chair closer to hear.

"You think you're so smart. You think you know everything," the snide voice went on. It sounded vaguely familiar – where had Link heard it before? "But I'm warning you, boy – you are dealing with powers far beyond your comprehension, powers you couldn't even begin to understand. Turn back now, before the door you've opened closes behind you. This will be your last warning." Pause. "And I don't know who gave you that folder, or who's been feeding you lies. But let me assure you, _I will find out._"

The speakers crackled, almost obscuring one last, venomous remark.

"And when I do, I will end both of you myself."


	10. The Unraveling

Jake woke up early in the morning feeling uneasy. Maybe it was because he'd had a few too many drinks last night, to wash away the memory of Ganon's cold voice over the phone – telling him that the boy would be dead by tomorrow morning. Maybe it was the lingering headache from the Advil he'd taken for his toothache.

Or maybe it was the hard, insistent pounding on the door of his apartment.

Groggily, Jake rolled out of bed. After throwing some water on his face and swishing around a mouthful of toothpaste, he stumbled to the door and opened it.

At first his eyes refused to believe what he was seeing.

Finally he managed to croak out, "…Link?"

"Don't give me _any _of that shit," Link said, and pushed abruptly past him, storming straight into the apartment without waiting to be invited. Not sure what to do, Jake hesitantly closed the door and followed him.

Link threw himself down at the dinner table and glared at Jake. "All right, I want some answers. And you're going to give them to me."

Jake swallowed. He didn't know what to say, what to do. This boy… he was supposed to be dead_._ "I don't know what you mean. Look, kid, it's six-thirty in the morning –"

"I am not a _kid_," Link said through clenched teeth. "So stop calling me one." He threw something onto the table; Jake sat down to take a look. A manila folder.

"This showed up on my desk last night," Link said flatly. "Open it."

Jake did. The more he read, the wider his eyes got, and the faster his heart pounded against his ribcage. Who had given all of this to the boy? This was confidential – this had all been destroyed long ago, his boss had assured him of it. So why – who –

"The kids," Link said, snapping him out of his thoughts. "They're in the robots, aren't they?"

Jake squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. There was no point in lying to the boy. "That's been our working theory, yes."

"And the boss. He's involved somehow."

"…I think so."

"You think so, or know so?" Link said sharply.

Jake hated himself for admitting it. "…Know so."

"Why did you never tell me?"

"Because… because I didn't know –"

"Know what?"

Jake sighed. "Look, kid – nothing I'm about to say leaves this room. Got it?"

Link nodded gravely.

"The boss – he's taken some kind of fancy to you. Don't ask me why, but he's obsessed with shutting you up... by any means necessary."

"And he can do something to those robots. Control them. To make them more or less aggressive," Link needled. "Can't he?"

Jake chewed his lip nervously. Just how much had this kid figured out? "…Yes, he can."

"How?"

"I don't know," Jake lied quickly.

Link's eyes narrowed. Jake thought it was a little unsettling, how easily the boy could see through him. "Are you sure?"

"Look, he's – he's got some kind of central computer network hooked up, okay? One he can control the robots from… sort of. I don't know much else about it, and I don't know where he would have gotten the programming knowledge to do it from," Jake said, all in a rush. "Are you satisfied now?"

"No. Why did you agree to do this? Why are you helping them cover it up?"

Jake put his head in his hands. "I don't know! I don't know – before I knew it I was in too deep, and they asked me whose side I was on, and – and I had to say _something,_ or they'd shut me up too!"

For the first time since he'd met him, Link felt sorry for Jake. He was clearly in over his head along with the rest of them. And even if he had been their pawn all this time, he certainly wasn't a willing one.

"So what do I do now, then? Quit my job and hide in my apartment for the rest of my life?"

"I don't know," Jake said, looking up from his palms. "But you're in this now, and there's no way you're getting out. You're either with them, or against them."

Link swallowed. "Isn't there a third option?"

Jake shook his head sadly. "I wish I could say yes. Look, Link, you're in too deep – you know too much. They're hunting you down even as we speak. You're going to have to make a choice."

Link sighed. "Well, I'm certainly not _with_ them…"

"That settles it, then."

"But then… whose side am I on?"

Jake shrugged. "Your own, I guess. Good luck."

Link massaged his forehead with his thumbs. "But if I go anywhere near that place, they'll kill me."

"Everyone seems to want you dead," Jake said, with a dark laugh. "You want my advice? I recommend you figure out who wants you dead _less._"

Just then, Link's phone buzzed against his side. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen and swore under his breath; it was Zelda.

"Who's that?" Jake asked, utterly impassive.

Link shot him a wary look. "Just a friend."

"Mm? Are her ears like yours?"

Link froze. Jake just sat there, hands folded on the table, looking at him. But Link saw a glint of triumph in the man's eyes; he knew he'd struck a nerve.

Link didn't like being toyed with. "What's it to you?" he asked, keeping his voice carefully level.

"Don't be naïve. Your ears – haven't you ever noticed anything funny about them?"

His hands automatically strayed to them, fingering the pointed tips. "…I thought it was just a quirk."

"You've never seen the boss's ears?"

"…No…"

"Well, they're just like yours," Jake said. "In fact, a few days ago he told me to take a gander at _your_ ears. Said it was important."

"Did he say why?"

"I don't know," Jake said, shrugging helplessly. "I just do what I'm told, okay? I have to do what he says."

Link pondered this. He'd never thought much about his ears; he'd just assumed he was some freak of nature. He usually tried to hide them with his hair or his bulky headphones. But… could they mean something after all?

"Anyway, about your next move," Jake said, abruptly shifting topics. "I think there's only one thing you can do now, all things considered."

"What's that?"

"Go back."

Link stared. "Are you out of your goddamn _mind_?"

"Just hear me out for a second," Jake said hurriedly. "I don't know who gave you that file –"

"Yeah, I don't know either."

"- but whoever it was, they had to have a key to the restaurant to slip it on your desk."

Link hadn't thought about that.

"And they also would need access to confidential files," Jake went on. "Gan – I mean, the boss would have buried all of that stuff years ago. The only place these photocopies could have come from was the boss's own hard drive."

Link considered this. "So it would have to be someone who had access to his computer, and a key to the restaurant. Some kind of high-up employee. Like a second-in-command."

"Exactly," Jake said. "And now the question is, who? And why have they decided to help you?"

Link sighed and raked his hands through his hair. "So many goddamn _questions_."

"You came to me for answers, and that's what I'm giving you. But I'm afraid that I don't know all of them. Some, you'll have to work out for yourself," Jake said simply. "It's up to you now. Are you going to go back and look for the truth, the _whole_ truth? Or are you just going to walk away?"

The question hung in the air for a while; neither of them spoke. But they didn't need to. Both of them already knew the answer.


	11. Night Four (Part 1)

**11:48 PM, NIGHT 4**

_Dear Link._

Link strode into the pizzeria as confidently as he could manage, his chin up, blue eyes glittering as he threw a quick glance around. As he'd expected, the place was dark and empty. Devoid of life.

_You're only digging your own grave. I thought you should know that._

Link turned on his heel and stalked down the hallway closest to him, the east hall. His eyes flicked back and forth until he found the doorway he was looking for. Without hesitation, he stepped into his old office.

_He can do things you can't even imagine._

He dropped down in his swivel chair, the one that had defended him from a deranged animatronic just last night; only after throwing a quick glance around to ensure he was _really _alone did he open the laptop. It powered up slowly, as usual – it was a full three minutes before the fan turned on, with a groggy whir like a creature rudely awakened. The thing probably hadn't been serviced in years.

_But there's something no one's told you yet, something he'd never tell you._

As he started up the monitoring software, he noticed that the cupcake was gone from his desk. Maybe that meant they didn't know he was here?

_You're special, Link. You're different. And that terrifies him._

Because he had come a little earlier than usual, he checked his email. Three new messages stared up at him from his inbox.

_Listen – I haven't got much time._

One was from a friend in his history class. Asking about a project they were working on. Link snorted and deleted it; that was the last thing on his mind right now.

_Your boss, the man they call Mr. Ganon… he isn't human._

The second email was from Zelda. Wondering if he was all right. He hadn't been answering her calls lately. He put it in his "Reply Soon" folder; he'd get to it later. If there even _was_ a later after tonight.

_And you know what?_

The third email was from an unknown sender. Strange.

_You're not, either._

Against his better judgment, he opened it and started to read.

_I can't tell you anything else. Don't tell anyone I've been communicating with you. Delete this email as soon as you get it._

Link's eyes flicked over the message in disbelief. It was short, brief, but every word was weighted with meaning.

_And whatever you do… don't get caught. -SK_

Link sat back in his chair, heart thundering. What did this mean? How could it be possible, that his own boss was not human?

How could it be that he wasn't, either?

His watch beeped, but he heard it only dimly. His thoughts were still racing. _SK_… Who did he know with those initials? Not Zelda, or Jake. No one from school jumped to mind.

Then he remembered that his shift had started, and he was supposed to be watching the cameras. Damnit – what if they were already moving?

Or maybe Ganon didn't know he was here. Maybe they would just act like they had on his first night – docile, only popping up at his door occasionally.

He checked the stage.

All of them were gone.

Oh yes. Ganon most certainly knew he was here.

**12:34 AM, NIGHT 4**

It didn't take him long to figure out they were pissed. _Very_ pissed.

But tonight, they were being a little more manageable. Maybe it was because Link was getting better at knowing when to shut the doors and when not to. Maybe Ganon hadn't fiddled with their programming like he had on the previous night.

Or maybe they were just going easy on him for a while, wearing him down until he made a mistake, left a door open –

Link grimaced, shook himself out of these thoughts and checked the left light. Bonnie wasn't there. Checked the right light; there was Chica at the window. Shut the right door. Checked Pirate Cove. Checked the left light again.

He soon fell into a pattern, every movement perfectly coordinated, never making a mistake. He was ready for tonight. He had been for a very long time. All he had to do was keep his focus.

And, of course, listen for Freddy's footsteps. Although he couldn't help noticing something: the bear animatronic had been much less aggressive tonight than usual. Perhaps it was because Link had bested him twice, and Freddy knew what would happen if he crossed him again.

Or was there something else afoot?

He was just thinking about this when the phone rang.

Link's brow furrowed in confusion. The phone usually rang _before_ his shift, not during. Nevertheless, he slowly picked it up, cycling through the lights as he spoke. "Hello?"

"I knew you'd be there," sighed a voice. "I was hoping you wouldn't be."

Link suddenly wished that the animatronics had gotten him after all. "…Zel?"

"Why are you still going back there, Link? After what this job has been doing to you?"

He wanted so badly to tell her the truth. _Because I have to know what really happened here ten years ago, because I need to find out who SK is, because I have to figure out who left me a folder full of incriminating evidence, because I have to know if I really am going crazy or not…_

Instead he decided on, "Because I was bored."

She gave a soft laugh. "Don't you have anything better to do tonight?"

"Not really, no." He checked Pirate Cove. Foxy glared at him from the shadows.

"Oh… well, have you been reading Slaughterhouse Five?"

He closed the left door; Bonnie had been just about to duck inside. "Yeah. It's pretty weird."

"Don't you just love his writing style? He's so unique."

"Um, yeah. Totally." Opened the right door, then swore – Chica hadn't left, she was just hiding. He hurriedly closed it again. G_oddamn robots._

"You don't sound like you're listening."

"Yeah, well, I'm kinda preoccupied at the moment."

She blew out an exasperated breath. "Link, won't you _please_ tell me what's going on?"

He swallowed. Checked Pirate Cove; Foxy was getting ready to run. _Shit._ "…I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do." She was silent for a while. Finally, she gave a resigned sigh and said, "Well, whatever it is… make sure you don't try anything out of your league. Okay?"

"Okay," he agreed tightly. He wanted so badly to hang up and get back to work; she was distracting him too much already. His reflexes were getting slower. He'd almost let Bonnie in twice already.

But no – she was his friend. He'd do anything for her.

Her soft laugh crackled through the receiver. "See you tomorrow, Link."

He closed his eyes. He knew there probably wouldn't _be _a tomorrow, at least for him. Why the hell had he agreed to come back here?

"Link?" she asked, when he didn't respond. "Are you still there?"

"…Yeah. I'm still here."

"Good-bye, Link."

"…Bye, Zel," he whispered. And hung up.

He wanted to cry. But he couldn't. He only allowed himself a quiet sigh before going back to work. The work that no one was paying him to do and no one ever survived.

**2:39 AM, NIGHT 4**

Check right light. Close right door.

Check Pirate Cove.

Check left light. Open left door.

Check right hallway camera feed –

Oh. Shit.

Freddy was here.

Link glanced nervously at the right door, just to make sure it was closed. He hated that bear, even though he'd already beat the stuffing out of it twice. He was pretty sure he could take it a third time.

Although the previous times had been mostly dumb luck.

He decided not to think about it and checked the left light. He saw Bonnie's shadow, but not the bunny itself – it was probably waiting for the light to turn off so it could slip inside.

_Not gonna happen._ He shut the door. Better safe than sorry, after all.

_Thunk. Thunk._

Freddy was beating on the right door, the little bastard. Hopefully he wouldn't have the strength in his fluffy limbs to break it down, but Link wasn't taking any chances – he kept an eye on it as he checked the Pirate Cove feed again.

Foxy was gone. _Damnit!_

He waited for Foxy to knock before he checked the left light. Bonnie had wandered away, so he opened the door – then quickly closed it again when he heard running footsteps. Damn, these things were getting smart. They were learning his patterns – getting tougher and tougher as the night went on.

But he wasn't going to mess with Freddy anymore. He would just keep the right door closed all night, like he had last time. Hopefully that wouldn't eat up too much of his power.

He checked the left hallway feed on his laptop. Bonnie was there, but something was… strange.

The animatronic's head kept twitching sporadically, like it wasn't properly attached to its neck. And it was making garbled noises, like it was in pain. If Link listened hard, he could almost hear the sounds through the door.

There were words – hard to distinguish, but there nonetheless – interspersed in the weird mumbling.

"ashkhkjsfhsd-_hisfault-_jandhjeuth-_run-_djshjk-_runnow –_"

Link swallowed hard. It almost sounded like a warning. But that couldn't be possible – these were the things that were trying to kill him… right?

Although, now that he thought about it, they had every right to be annoyed. After all, they _had_ been brutally murdered and stuffed into suits, and now they wanted every other employee of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza to suffer the same fate.

Maybe there was some way to convey to them he _wasn't _a ruthless serial killer.

He drummed his fingers on the desk, considering his next move. Maybe now would be a good time to scour the Fazbear employee database, see just how many people had been given keys to the restaurant over the years. Maybe that would help him narrow down his search for whoever had left him the folder. Although that was probably sensitive information – he'd need a talented hacker to break through their firewalls, and he'd only learned a smattering of Javascript from his Graphic Design class.

So he pushed that particular issue to the back of his mind, refocusing on keeping the animatronics _out_ and himself (and his sanity) _in._

The phone rang again.

_Jesus. _How many people were going to call him tonight?

Hesitantly, he picked up the phone. "Hello?"

For a moment, the line only buzzed. Then there came a tentative voice. "Link? Are you there?"

"Jake?"

"Uh, listen, kid – I've got some bad news."

"Spill it," Link said, checking the left light. Bonnie was still there – why wasn't he leaving?

"Um… I don't exactly know how to say this."

"Well, say it."

"Have you ever met my son?"

Link frowned. "Uh… the one who was born on Monday?"

"No, no – I made that up."

"Gee, that's nice to know."

"But my real son is seventeen – he's a high school dropout. Not exactly the kind of kid you're proud of as a parent."

Link sighed. "Jake, I don't mean to be rude, but what's your point?"

"He's gone. Do you know what that means?"

"…Uh, you should probably be worried?"

"No, I'm saying _you_ should be worried. Link, my son works for the same guy you and I do. He's the one who changes the animatronics' chips, fixes glitches in their programming. The boss kind of hired him as a favor to me, because, well… let's just say high school dropouts don't have many career choices."

Link blinked. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

The line crackled. "I didn't think it was important. Look, Link, my point is – if he's gone, that means the boss knows you're there. He calls my son in every time he needs to alter the robot's programming."

Suddenly Link saw where this was going. "So your son got called in tonight, because…"

"That's right." Jake took an audible breath. "I think my son is the one who can control the robots."


	12. Night Four (Part 2)

**4:47 AM**

Wolf was bored.

He was _dying_ to throw something else at this kid - a malfunctioning door, maybe, or a broken light. Perhaps even an unexpected, momentary power failure, just to watch Link squirm.

But the boss wouldn't let him.

"Why can't you let me have some fun?" he pouted, glancing over his shoulder at Ganon. The boss completely ignored him; he was pacing back and forth across the basement, everything about his demeanor indicating that he was thinking very hard about something.

Wolf wisely left him to it and checked the cameras again. There was Link, still very much alive and in the process of opening the left door. Conserving power - the smart little bastard. He looked at Ganon again. The boss didn't seem to be paying attention.

Maybe if he typed quietly...

"Wolf, I can trust you, can't I?"

He jumped at the sound of Ganon's voice. "What?"

"I can trust you," the boss said, glaring at him. "Right?"

"Uh... yeah. Sure, boss."

Ganon resumed his pacing. "Do you know," he began, "why I hate _every fiber of that little wretch's body?_" His hands clenched briefly into fists, as though the very mention of Link made him angry beyond all reason.

"...No, boss," Wolf said tentatively, wondering where the hell this was going and if it would end in him getting fired.

"Well," Ganon said venomously, "he has been bothering me for a long time." Pause. "A _very, very _long time."

"...Okay..."

"And when he showed up in my office with those stupid _headphones_ on, asking for the janitor position, like he didn't know who I was - do you have any idea how _furious_ that made me, Wolf?" Talking seemed to only make Ganon angrier; now he wasn't so much pacing as he was stomping back and forth.

"N-no..." Wolf didn't understand what his boss was talking about. How was Link supposed to know who Ganon was? It wasn't like the kid was psychic.

"Well, Wolf, it made me _angry._ So very angry..." Ganon stopped pacing abruptly and gave Wolf a fierce look. "You understand why I have to get rid of him. Don't you?"

"No..."

"Of course you don't. You're just a _mortal_," Ganon said it as though it were some disgusting curse word. "You have no idea... the _hatred_ I feel for this boy. He has foiled me time after time after _time_, always in the way, always there to... but no more. Never again." His face broke into a twisted smile. "Now, he's not a Hero anymore. For all he knows, he's just another head-banging teenager with a minimum-wage job. And he will pay for what he has done to me - how many times he, an insolent little boy, has defeated me, a _god._"

Wolf was trembling now. He didn't know what he'd done to set his boss off like this.

"And you - you will stand by me until the end," Ganon's attention turned abruptly back to his programmer. "Won't you?"

Wolf blinked rapidly. "...Of course."

"Good," Ganon spat. He motioned to the monitoring screen. "Now _make him suffer_." With that, he stalked out.

Over his shoulder, he called, "If he's still alive by tomorrow morning, it will be you who pays the price."

Wolf slowly turned back to the computer, his heart banging against his ribcage. He'd never seen the boss like this before. Sure, he was unusually prone to random fits of psychotic rage, but never like that. Never to the point where he physically threatened his most trusted employees.

His hand shook so badly he could barely operate the mouse; nevertheless, he checked the monitoring feed from the office -

\- and felt his heart drop into his stomach.

The office was empty.

Where had Link gone?

Wolf cycled wildly through the cameras. He saw a blur of motion on one and stopped - Link was backstage, hiding behind a rack of spare endoskeleton heads and animatronic masks.

Wolf's eyes widened. Oh no. No, no, no. He'd seen too many night guards try this same tactic, suffer the same fate... and yet, he should be used to it by now.

So why did it bother him so much now, seeing that blond-haired boy cowering all alone in the darkness?

He debated what to do. He could just let it happen - let the animatronics find the kid, and watch, as he had watched so many times before, as they jammed his struggling, broken body into a suit.

Or...

He looked at Link again. The boy's hair was glowing on the security feeds, like a little candle in the crushing darkness.

...What was this emotion he was feeling? He was so used to the emptiness, the hate, the rage that Ganon had drilled into him over years and years of employment. He was used to his role, as both savior and executioner.

He was used to the fact that every week, he - his actions - resulted in the death of a human being.

But maybe... maybe just this once, he would disobey orders.

This new night guard, this Link - he was just a boy, after all. He didn't deserve this.

Wolf took a deep, steadying breath. Glanced at the doorway again, just to make sure Ganon had really left.

Then, slowly, he started to type.

_{_

_exec fullShutdown; numAnim = all;_

_}_

He hesitated.

Ganon would never know about this... right?

In a sudden moment of decision, he punched the Enter button.

He looked at the camera feed again, and was horrified to see that white eyes had appeared in the doorway, glowing strangely in the shadows.

Why hadn't the shutdown program worked?

His fingers flew as he typed in a string of new commands, praying that _one_ of them would work in time to save Link's life -

_exec emergencyShutdown;_

_exec codeRed;_

Pressed Enter. Still nothing.

The white eyes became a brown-furred face, with a black eyepatch - Foxy was on the prowl. The animatronic stalked into the room on ruined legs, head swiveling as it hunted for signs of life. Behind the rack of spare parts, Link visibly trembled.

_exec emergencyShutdown; parameter = "Foxy";_

Enter. Nothing.

Foxy inched closer to Link's hiding spot, nose in the air as though he could smell the boy's fear.

_exec emergencyShutdown; waitTime = 0;_

Enter. No reaction.

In one surprisingly fluid motion, given its severely deteriorated state, the animatronic pushed the rack to the side. Link's scream rattled through Wolf's speakers.

Wolf slammed his fist down on the keyboard in frustration. Something had to work. Something had to get through to the thing -

There was only one option. He would have to connect directly to Foxy's interface, and bombard him with shutdown commands until something broke through.

...Or he could try a completely new angle.

_exec directConnect; parameter = "Foxy";_

_console log "SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY";_

Enter.

Nothing.

_console log "PLEASE";_

_console log "HE'S MY FRIEND";_

Enter.

No response.

Foxy grabbed Link with one hand (Wolf was relieved to notice that it wasn't his hook), and Link automatically began to struggle, lashing out at the robot with his feet. But it was no use. His sneakers only banged uselessly against a metal endoskeleton.

_console log "STOP";_

_console log "PLEASE STOP";_

Wolf hesitated.

_console log "YOU WERE A KID ONCE TOO";_

Enter.

Foxy froze.

Wolf's heart pounded in his throat. _Please let him go. Please let him go_.

For a full ten seconds, the world held its breath.

Then, slowly, Foxy's steel fingers uncurled as he released Link. The boy fell to the ground like a stone, gasping and rubbing his neck.

But he was alive - and clearly confused as to why he'd been spared. He stared at Foxy in astonishment as the animatronic walked away, moving jerkily towards the security camera mounted on the wall just above the scene; Wolf tried not to panic as the robot peered into the camera, as if trying to figure out who was behind it.

For a long moment, Wolf was almost sure that Foxy could see him.

Then Foxy turned and walked away. Just left.

Link blinked. He looked up at the camera, just as Foxy had - tilted his head a little, as if he was silently putting something together. But he didn't have much time to wonder, because it was just then that his watch beeped. It was six o' clock.

Somehow, unbelievably, he was alive.

Wolf smiled, stood up and walked away from his monitor. For some reason, he didn't even care how badly Ganon was going to whoop his ass later. He had saved someone's life. He had done something good, for once.

He could only hope that he wouldn't come to regret it.


	13. Springlock, Springtrap

It was seven o' clock in the morning, and, as anyone who had known Link for any length of time could have told you, he was sleeping.

His late shifts at the pizzeria, not to mention the stress and panic they entailed, were perfectly good cause for any normal person to have nightmares. But for some reason, Link was having an unusually good rest tonight – as much of a peaceful, dreamless slumber as the psychologically scarred victim of a robot attack could manage.

He rolled over in bed, mumbling something incomprehensible into his pillow. He'd fallen asleep with his headphones on again; they were currently blaring Metallica, so it was a testament to how deep he was in dreamland that he didn't even stir.

He'd tried his best to stay awake, of course. Tried to figure out why Foxy had let him go, right when he had Link at his mercy. It didn't make sense – Freddy had always been perfectly happy to try and crush his esophagus, and Bonnie and Chica certainly hadn't shown any signs of wanting to spare him in the past.

So why was Foxy different?

Things just weren't adding up. If his suspicions were correct, and five children had gone missing on that day ten years ago, then why were their restless ghosts only haunting four animatronics?

...Unless there was more than four.

He jerked awake and fumbled around on his bedside table. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to know.

As he'd expected, Jake picked up on the first ring. "Yello?"

"Jake. How many animatronics were there? When this place first opened?"

"…What?"

"Listen to me! How many?"

"Um… well, there was Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, of course. And then we had some spare Freddy suits in storage... including..." He trailed off, but something about the way he'd said it caught Link's attention.

"Including what?"

"Well, um – it was just another suit we kept in the back. From the old place, back when this place was a diner instead of a pizzeria." There was a noticeable silence. "No one's really supposed to know… I mean, we don't use that one anymore."

"Why not?"

Jake coughed. "There was an… incident."

"Involving what?"

"Er… I'm not really supposed to – I mean –"

"_Jake._"

"…Look, Link, this is all off the record, okay? But… well, um, do you remember a few years back, when the employees used to be able to wear the suits? Walk around in them, greet the kids… that sort of thing?"

"No…"

"Well, they did. And that's because there was a springlock mechanism inside the older suits. You could use it to lock and flatten all the animatronic parts against the sides of the suit, so a person could fit inside."

"Uh-huh…"

"So anyway – that old suit we keep in the back now, that one had a springlock mechanism, too. And they were supposed to work really well, y'know. Make sure the person inside was safe while wearing the suit. And, of course, if any accidents were to occur, we would be free of liability."

"Of course," Link said flatly. "I'm not surprised."

"Anyhow, one day – well, frankly, we're not sure how it happened, but – there was a multiple springlock failure in that suit. Do you understand what I'm saying, Link? The locks _failed_."

Link frowned. "What's the big deal? Can't you just fix them?"

"Well, that's the thing, Link… they failed _while a person was inside_."

Oh.

_Oh._

"Holy shit," Link breathed.

"My thoughts exactly, when I heard," Jake said grimly. "Of course, after that, the employees were forbidden to wear the suits again. We were clogged up with lawsuits enough as it was, after the – um – other stuff that had been going on."

Link decided to pretend he hadn't heard that last part.

"…So you're saying… someone _died _in that suit?"

"Um… as far as we can tell, yes. That seems to be what happened."

"Jesus Christ," Link said faintly. He was suddenly very sorry he'd called.

"I can understand how this might be upsetting."

"Yeah, you think?" What would that be like, getting slowly crushed to death by endoskeleton parts and crossbeams? It didn't sound like a very pleasant way to go.

"But don't worry. We sealed that thing up behind four feet of concrete long ago, back when we had to fill in the safe rooms for… um… security reasons."

Gee, that didn't sound uncomfortable and suspicious at all.

"So that's where it is now?" Link confirmed. "The suit? It's not anywhere in the pizzeria?"

"Well, if it is, then it certainly shouldn't be," Jake gave an awkward laugh. "Don't worry, Link. It's a horrible, tragic story, but that's all it is. Nothing to lose sleep over."

"So why did the mechanisms fail in the first place? Does anyone know?"

"Well, those things had been tested and tested to kingdom come before they were first implemented, so… no, we don't really know. I suppose if you were trying to get into the suit very fast, without properly tightening the mechanisms –"

"Why would someone do that?"

"I don't know, Link, okay? I've told you everything the boss has told me. That's all I can do."

"…All right, I get it. Thanks, Jake."

"Link, wait."

He'd been just about to hang up. "Yeah?"

"...There's also the Fredbear suit."

"The what?"

"Well, it's like I said before - this place used to be called Fredbear's Family Diner. And we still have the original Fredbear suit. It's kinda old, though, so we don't use it anymore. Looks more yellow than brown now." Pause. "This isn't the same as the one I first mentioned, of course. That one was the original Bonnie."

"But the Fredbear suit, it's still... you know... here? In the restaurant?"

"Yeah. It's still here."

Link chewed his lip. "And there aren't any weird stories tied to that one?"

"Not that we know of, but... who knows with this place." Jake chuckled nervously. "But anyway, that's all the other animatronics and suits we own, besides the four main ones. Does that answer your question?"

"...Yeah, it does. Thanks, Jake."

"Have a good one." Click.

Link lay there in bed for a long time, pondering what he'd just learned. So there were more suits after all – but the first one, the one with the springlock failure, didn't sound like it was playing host to one of the missing children. Just how many mysterious deaths had occurred in this place, anyway?

Well, it seemed like he would need to do some digging himself, instead of just relying on Jake for everything. He rolled over and curled up under the blankets – he'd think about it in the morning.

Soon he was fast asleep again.

And as he slept, he dreamed.

\- _he tries to get to the button, but he's too slow, and Bonnie is inside_

_fumbling for the laptop, sweaty fingers slipping on the keys as he types -_

_helpmehelpmehelpme_

_the eyes glow in the darkness, he never noticed that before, never realized how human those eyes are_

_someonehelpme_

_\- the iron hands close on his throat -_

_please_

...

Ganon felt distinctly as though his world was crumbling around him.

For one thing, the boy was still alive (which made him angry). For another thing, his faithful code monkey had stopped answering his calls (which made him _very_ angry). And on top of that, he no longer had a janitor (which made him _extremely_ angry, because now he'd have to do those pesky interviewing sessions all over again).

But that kid… _How had he survived?_

Ganon reviewed the footage one more time. It was from one of the closed-circuit cams in the parking lot – he'd installed them himself a few years back, so the only way one could monitor them was through his own computer. Which, of course, was impenetrable to outside attack. Wolf had assured him of that.

For the fifteenth time that night, he watched Link walking to his car, still very much alive, whistling and spinning his keys on his finger as though he'd won the world.

The cocky _bastard._

He swore and slammed his fist down on the desktop, rattling his pens and pencils. _How is it possible?_ No one had ever made it this far. Not one. But there that pesky Hero was. Still there, still interfering with his plans with his very _existence_. Ganon shuddered in disgust – hating that even as he, a _god,_ had been reincarnated into a new body, so had his eternal nemesis.

But there was one difference.

The boy remembered nothing of his past lives.

Ganon had been initially shocked to realize it – that Link hadn't even reacted the first time he'd seen Ganon's face. Hadn't looked surprised, or horrified, or angry. He'd just been… well, his usual, obnoxious self. Like always.

If Link had remembered, things would be very different, Ganon mused. Link would have realized who that Wolf boy was, who Zelda was. He would have realized that those two came from the same realm as he and the King of Darkness, would have remembered that Zelda was the maiden to whose side he was eternally bound – would have recalled whose side Wolf had been on _that_ time.

But no. Things were different now. Ganon's lips twisted into a cruel smile as, yet again, he admired the cards Fate had dealt him – he had all the wonders of modern technology at his disposal now, and by God, he was going to use them. He would hunt down that blasted Hero once and for all. That insolent little _boy_ who had no idea Ganon was on an obsessive crusade to end his life.

That was the reason he'd killed those children so long ago, of course. They'd all borne a very slight resemblance to that distasteful Hero, that horrid fairy boy – and Ganon could not let them live. Could not let them survive, just in case –

The phone rang.

Ganon sighed. Another call from Jake, probably – telling him in his pathetic little voice that yet again, Link had beaten the odds. He picked up. "_What_?"

The line buzzed. There was no reply.

Ganon scowled and hung up. Probably a telemarketer.

He was just about to go back to his paperwork when it rang again.

He snatched it off the cradle. "_What the hell do you want?_"

An awkward pause. Then, "Um… is this the number for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza?"

"Oh. Er," Ganon said, a little abashed that he'd yelled at a client. "Yes, it is. My apologies – I thought I was talking to someone else."

"That's – that's okay. Uh… my name's Zelda. I was hoping you could connect me with a supervisor? Or a manager, or something? I have a question about the company."

Ganon's heart stilled.

"I'm the manager," he said, fighting to keep his voice normal. _Don't give yourself away, you fool. _"What's your question?"

"It's just… my friend Link – do you know him?"

_Natural. Act natural_. "…It rings a bell, yes. Isn't he the night guard?"

"Yeah – he's been filling in for a friend the past few days. But lately he's been saying weird stuff – he keeps talking about the robots moving at night, trying to get into his office. Do you know anything about that?"

"No, I don't," Ganon said coolly. "I'm afraid your friend is quite delusional. The animatronics are perfectly safe."

"…Oh, okay. Good." She sighed. "I guess I should have known he was making it up..."

Ganon almost laughed out loud. _If only she knew._

"Anyway - thanks again," she went on. "Hopefully I haven't taken up too much of your time."

"Not a problem," Ganon said smoothly. "I always have time for customers."

She hesitated. "There was actually one more thing I wanted to ask, if you have time."

"Be my guest."

"...It's just... your voice sounds so familiar. Have we met before?"

In an instant, Ganon's breezy confidence evaporated.

_She knows._

No, no, he mustn't overreact - maybe she hadn't had the dreams yet. Maybe she didn't remember...

"I don't think so, no," he said, as calmly as he could manage.

"Oh. All right - I was just wondering." But she sounded ever-so-faintly bewildered, like there was a little voice in the back of her mind telling her that _she knew this man -_

"Have a good evening," Ganon said, and hung up as hurriedly as he could without seeming rude.

Then he blew out a breath of relief. She hadn't recognized him - not consciously, anyway. But he would have to do something about that, before those feelings became memories.

And he'd also need to take care of that pesky Hero. Yes, that boy would return tonight, he was sure of it... and Ganon would have a little surprise waiting for him.

It only took one email.

_SK,_

_If Mr. Hero swings by tonight, enact some "repairs" on the ventilation._

_That kid won't stand a chance._

_\- G_


	14. Night Five (Part 1)

**11:49 PM, NIGHT 5**

They had given him so many chances.

Jake had offered him a way out on the first two nights. Zelda had told him not to come back. Hell, even _Ganon_ had told him to back out before it was too late.

But he hadn't listened.

_Why?_

Link didn't know. Couldn't remember what had made him drag himself out of bed at eleven, brush his teeth, throw on a moth-eaten sweatshirt and jeans and drive all the way here in the dark, by himself. Coming for his last shift.

Coming to die.

He jammed the key into the lock. Opened the front door.

Took a deep breath, because he _knew - _knew there was no going back now.

The first thing he thought when he shut it behind him was: _Why is it so stuffy in here?_

His second thought was: _Did I just hear something?_

His third thought was: _ohgodwhatisthat._

Because he'd just spotted what was lying in the center of the dining area, limp and boneless, utterly still. Two empty eyes stared at him from a brown-furred face, so deteriorated and bronzed from age that it almost looked gold.

Then, just like that, it was gone. Like it had never even been.

Link took a deep breath.

_shitshityoudidnotjustseethat_

He started walking forcefully, trying to banish all thoughts of what he'd seen from his mind.

_thereisnosuchthingasghosts_

_calmdown_

He entered the east hallway. Headed towards the office door. His hands shook, palms sweating, but he tried to ignore it, just as he ignored the sudden feeling of lightheadedness that washed over him as he stepped inside.

_itsallinyourhead_

_itsnotreal_

He sat down in his chair. Picked up the laptop, opened it, set it on his lap. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to relax.

Why was it so goddamn hard to _breathe?_

But that wasn't important. He was still putting things together, still trying to make something coherent and logical out of all the pieces he'd been given. There was a story here somewhere. Sure, it was buried under all the deaths and cover-ups and secrets and lies - but it was there. Somewhere.

He glanced at his watch. Eleven fifty-five. He still had some time to prepare himself for the hell that was to come, this living nightmare that for some reason he _kept going back to,_ like he just couldn't stay away even if he wanted to -

The phone rang.

Link stared at it warily, considering the possibilities. It might be Zelda, giving him one last warning. It might be Jake, telling him how stupid he was for going back, informing him that no one else had lasted this long (even though Link already knew that, thank you very much). Or it could be Ganon, with more death threats and smugness.

He didn't like any of those options. But he picked up the phone anyway. "Hello?"'

"Listen to me." It was a voice Link didn't recognize, low and husky. "Can you hear me?"

"Who is this?"

"Not important. Just listen - they closed off the ventilation. It's like a goddamn vacuum in here now, and you're gonna start seeing things, Link. But whatever you do, you have to remember - it's all in your head."

"...What?" But Link was gradually starting to realize how hard it was to breathe, how hot and dry the air was. Could this guy be telling the truth...?

_"It's all in your head_. You got it? Say it to me."

"...It's all in my head."

"Right. You're gonna be fine. Just don't panic, all right?"

"_Who is this?_" Link demanded.

A deep sigh. "Wolf. Okay? My name's Wolf. Now shut up and focus - your shift's starting."

Link hadn't even noticed. He glanced at his watch and felt a miniscule twinge of fear; it was twelve o' clock. Why hadn't his alarm gone off?

...Or maybe it had... _damnit._

_"_Thanks," he said. "Whoever you are."

"Call me a reluctant guardian angel," said Wolf, sounding vaguely amused. "Now get to work - but don't hang up on me, okay? Just put the phone on the desk. I'll try to keep you calm so you don't suck down too much oxygen." A grim laugh. "If my calculations are correct, you haven't got much of it left."

"...How do you know it's been shut off?" It seemed like something Ganon wouldn't tell his employees about - that is, if this kid actually was an employee. But he sounded much too young to be a second-in-command, or the kind of person who'd have keys and would be able to slip Link a certain folder...

"Let's just say, when I installed the boss's firewalls, I may have left some deliberate backdoors."

Link blinked. "You installed..."

"Focus! Stop talking to me. You're wasting time and power."

"Sorry -" Link hurriedly set the phone down and began flipping through the cameras. All of them had left the stage, as he'd expected - but they were just milling around aimlessly, for some reason. Bonnie was hanging out backstage, Chica was wandering around the bathrooms, and Freddy was staying put in the dining area. A quick glance at the Cove revealed that Foxy hadn't budged from behind his curtain.

Why weren't they attacking? It _was_ Friday night, after all. Surely it should be much more stressful than this.

"What are they doing?" Wolf seemed worried by his silence.

"Just... sitting there."

Wolf blew out a breath. "Just as I thought. Link, stay on your guard. They're not gonna be like that for long."

"Why not?"

"Because they're n - ah -" Suddenly Wolf's voice cut out, replaced by static.

Link frowned and shook the phone a little, even though common sense told him it wouldn't work. "Wolf? You there?"

Silence for a moment. Then a loud thumping sound rattled through the receiver, like something hitting the floor.

Then nothing. Just static again.

Trembling, Link set it down (he didn't hang up, just in case the signal came back) and cycled through the cameras again. Still nothing unusual - they were just... idling. Like they didn't have anything better to do.

He massaged his temple with his knuckles. He felt dizzy, confused - like all the blood had seeped out of his brain and was pooling in his feet. Dimly, he remembered Wolf's advice - _don't panic. Conserve oxygen. _He tried breathing through his nose, but that only made him dizzier.

He checked Pirate's Cove again. Foxy was still hiding. No one had showed up at his door yet - a cursory check of the lights revealed that. But why? It felt like nothing made sense anymore.

...Maybe Ganon hadn't altered their programming tonight.

But why? Had he just decided that Link would suffocate long before they'd get past the doors? No, that didn't seem like something he'd do. If Jake had been telling the truth, the guy desperately wanted him dead.

And yet... Ganon really wasn't going about it in the most efficient way, Link mused. He clearly had hired some dirty cop to cover up his tracks - that P.T. Cole guy, or whoever - so why was he so afraid of killing Link directly? What would happen? -

\- and who was in that suit, anyway? The one with the springlock failure? It couldn't have been Ganon - he'd be dead -

\- was there _more than one _enemy here, one that he just couldn't see -

His thoughts trailed off in his confused, oxygen-starved brain. He felt like he'd almost had a revelation, but he had lost the coherence to express it. _Damnit._

The cameras flickered.

Link wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't glanced in the monitor's direction. He frowned. He remembered it doing that before - just before...

_ohshit_

He hurled himself in the direction of the doors, smacked both buttons - felt a surge of relief as he watched them shut. No, he was _not_ going to go through what happened last night again. Not a goddamn chance -

Bonnie was the first to arrive. Eyes peered through the window, white and merciless. If Link hadn't been oxygen-deprived and half-delirious, he could have sworn he heard it tapping lightly on the glass -

_Let me in, Link. Aren't you going to let me in?_

Go away. Go away you bastard -

Chica's eyes peered at him from the other side. Ignoring her, Link checked the Pirate Cove feed again. Foxy was actually _twitching _onscreen, as if he couldn't wait to leave his curtain the moment Link looked away. _Goddamn it..._

Link was losing it. He could feel the control slipping away, the one that had helped him smoothly cycle through lights and cameras and doors just last night. He took another shuddering breath and tried to relax - he needed to focus, needed to save power, needed to... to...

_...I'm still here._

From far away, behind hastily erected walls and closed doors that should never have been opened, there came a sound like slow, deliberate footsteps.

Link suddenly remembered the sounds he'd heard on nights one and two - the odd, unexplained whirring that kept echoing through the hallways. Snatches of music whose source he could never find. The constant feeling that somewhere, somehow, he was being watched.

...Maybe...

But no, that was... it _couldn't be_...

...what if _the safe rooms were never..._

The universe seemed to be blurring around him. Oh God, he was going to pass out. He hurriedly dropped back into his chair, closed his eyes and tried to breathe. The air felt like it was stinging his throat, and no matter how many desperate breaths he sucked in, the nausea didn't go away.

_he'sgoingtokillyou_

He couldn't even muster up the strength to check the cameras. His arms felt too heavy - all he wanted to do was sleep. Maybe if he closed his eyes, just for a second...

_no no no stay awake_

"Having fun yet?"

The cold voice buzzed through his speakers, distorted but still audible. Link knew that voice. He ignored it - could barely hear it anyway, over the frantic pounding of his heart as it struggled to supply air to his body.

"Your time's almost up, little boy. I let you live because you amused me. Because it was fun to watch you squirm. But now... now the fun's over. Now, as it always must, the curtain falls on our little stage, and all will be as it once was..."

"You're crazy," Link said hoarsely. "You're insane."

"Am I?" the voice said serenely. "I don't think so. You see, I think I've finally found the one thing that scares you, Link. I've finally found the Hero's one, fatal flaw."

_Tap. Tap. Tap._ The footsteps were getting closer.

"Do you want to know what it is, Link?"

Link threw a feverish glance towards the right door - it was open. When had it opened? Or maybe it had never been closed at all - maybe that had all been just a hallucination, a dream...

"You don't like the feeling of _weakness." _Ganon hissed. "You don't like feeling powerless and alone. Helpless to save anyone... especially when it comes to your _little princess."_

"I don't know what you're talking about -"

"Of course you don't. And you never will." Now the voice wasn't coming through his speakers.

Now it was coming from _directly behind him -_

He felt something cold pressing against his temple.

"It's over now, Hero," Ganon whispered into his ear, the gracefully pointed ear that no one could explain. "I have your friends. Your little _girlfriend, _and my former programmer. Trust me when I assure you that you'll never see them again."

"It's never over," Link whispered.

"You're right," Ganon said calmly. Link heard the soft _click _of a safety being turned off. "It's never over. You see, long ago, I was _cursed... _cursed so that both our bloodlines would never end. I have been reincarnated so many times, Link, and so many times I have seen myself die. And always, always, it was at your pathetic hands." Ganon uttered a mad laugh, tinged with the desperation of a man who would finally, at long last, get his revenge. "But that ends here. It all ends _now_."

Link took one last gasp of hot, dry air. He didn't know what Ganon was talking about, and he wasn't sure he wanted to, but he had to say _something_. "You'll never get away with this," he rasped.

"Oh, but I've _already_ gotten away with it, Link. You see... I've been getting away with it for _three hundred years_."

Link had exactly one second to realize what this meant before the gun went off.

The darkness came quickly, and he welcomed it.


	15. Night Five (Part 2)

**5:34 AM, NIGHT 5**

Consciousness returned slowly, by degrees. Blood trickled back into Zelda's limbs, pins and needles erupting even as long-absent feeling came back - she stirred and opened her eyes, blinking to stop the world from spinning around her.

"Good, you're awake."

The voice sounded like it was coming from behind her, but she couldn't see a thing to locate it - everything was utterly black.

Where was she? The last thing she remembered was a sharp pain in the head. With some effort, she twisted around and discovered that she had been secured to a chair with tight cords, her hands tied behind her.

Well. This was just _fantastic._

"You okay?" the voice asked. "You took a pretty long time waking up."

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, squinting helplessly through the darkness. "Where are we?"

His voice was bitter. "Take your best guess."

Zelda chewed her lip. "...Some creepy guy's basement?"

"No... but I guess this is what I get for disobeying orders."

"Who are you?" Her eyes were adjusting a little; now she could make out the speaker. Like her, he had been tied to a chair, but unlike her, he looked resigned to his fate instead of panicked and confused. The only part about him that was animated were his fingers - he was struggling to work the cords around his wrists free.

"I'm Wolf," he said, barely even glancing at her. "And you're Zelda."

"...How do you know my name?"

"I know a lot of things," he said. Then he sighed and gave up on the cords. "Damnit - I thought he'd leave some slack, but he's smarter than that."

"Who's 'he'?"

"Ganon," he said, giving her an incredulous look. "What, your boyfriend's never mentioned him?"

"He's not my boyfriend," she said automatically.

He grinned, sensing he had plucked a nerve, but didn't push the subject.

"So... where are we?" Zelda repeated, wishing he would get to the point.

"Well, judging from how hard it is to breathe in here, we're probably in the pizzeria. I think he put us in one of the safe rooms."

"Safe rooms?" Link certainly hadn't mentioned _those._

"Yeah. Hopefully it's not the one with..." Wolf trailed off.

"With what?"

Wolf grimaced. "Never mind. Forget I said that." He refocused on the cords around his wrists, digging his fingernails into them. "I tried to help Link tonight," he went on, somewhat absentmindedly. "Called to warn him about the ventilation... should've known Ganon would bug my phone. He's an annoying sonuvabitch that way."

There were a lot of questions Zelda could ask about that statement, so she chose the most immediate one. "Is Link all right?"

"Well, if Ganon hasn't come to find us yet, then he's probably still alive." Wolf shrugged helplessly. "But I don't know for sure. Sounded pretty panicked when I talked to him."

Zelda bit her lip and said nothing.

Wolf's grey eyes studied her. "You really do care about him, don't you?"

"...Yes."

His gaze roved away from her and landed on his feet. "Must be nice. Not like my dad ever worried about _me_."

"Your dad?"

"Yeah. He works here too - head guard," Wolf said flatly. "Ganon likes him 'cause the animatronics have never caught him."

"...So it's true, what Link said. The robots _do _move."

"Oh, they do a lot more than move. If Link gets caught... well, let's just say tomorrow morning, there'll be one less suit in the back room."

Zelda swallowed. "You're kidding."

"I wish," Wolf said wearily. "I've seen it happen."

"You've seen it?" She gave him an incredulous look. "How?"

His next words came slowly, as though each one caused him immeasurable pain. "Because I work for Ganon too. Or at least, I did."

"What was your job?" She half-wondered why Ganon would hire anyone this young. He was only about her age, maybe a little younger.

"...Suffice it to say, most of the programs in those animatronics have my signature on them."

Before she could question him further, his face went white - he'd just spotted something in the corner. "Oh _shit._"

"What?"

He motioned with his bound hands. "Look."

With some effort, she managed to twist back around in her chair. Her eyes had finally adjusted, allowing her to make out metal shelves and filing cabinets... and an odd, out-of-place shape slumped in the corner.

Wolf looked terrified. "Oh shit. I thought he wouldn't..."

"What... what is it?"

"Something you do _not_ want to be in the same room with while you're tied to a chair." He began fighting his bonds again with renewed vigor, struggling to free his hands. "We have to get out of here - before it sees us -"

Zelda watched him with increasing bewilderment. "But if the animatronics outside can walk around -"

"It's all right, my watch says it's six o' clock - they should be - aghhh, goddamnit -" He rocked his chair urgently back and forth, trying to scoot closer to Zelda.

"What are you doing?"

"If I can get close enough to you, I can untie your hands," he said, in between frantic gasps of air. "Then you can escape -"

"What about you?"

"I'll be fine - you're more important," he said through gritted teeth. Now he was only a few inches away. "Quick, hold out your hands -"

_Whrrrr._

The shape in the corner moved.

Sweat was dripping from Wolf's bangs. "Goddamnit - _hold out your hands!"_

Zelda strained, stretching out her hands behind her as far as she could - Wolf finally reached her, and she felt his nimble fingers set to work on the knots. In between panting, he said, "No sudden movements - not a goddamn sound, you hear me?"

"...Okay..."

The shape stirred. Zelda thought she saw its legs twitch - it was trying to get up.

Then she felt the cords on her wrists fall free. "Quick, untie yourself - get out while you still can," Wolf said urgently. "It's gonna see us any second now -"

"I'm not leaving you," she hissed, and began working on his hands.

He stared at her pleadingly. "Look - if you try and save me we'll both die -"

"Bullshit," she said fiercely, and yanked the cords free. Wolf immediately began working on his own bonds as Zelda went back to hers. Soon her arms were free, and then her legs - she looked back at Wolf, who was already standing up, swaying a little as blood surged back into his long-dormant limbs.

"Let's get out of here," he whispered. "Quickly -"

She stumbled out of her chair, and turned to check on the progress of the thing in the corner -

Eyes blinked open, illuminated from within and yet oddly humanlike. They immediately fixed on her - the thing twitched violently, as if undergoing a seizure.

Wolf swore. "Come on, come on -" He grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the thing, towards the wall - he began feeling along the plaster urgently, searching for something that he dreaded would not be there -

"What are you looking for?"

"A door," he said tersely. "There's got to be one, if Ganon could put us in here -"

A raspy noise echoed through the room, like someone taking a breath. Zelda didn't dare look behind her. "Please hurry."

"Wait - I feel something -"

_Whrrrr. _Ancient servos hummed to life - the sound was getting closer -

"_Will you hurry up!"_ she hissed.

"Oh thank God it's a doorknob - here -"

Light, blessed light. Zelda blinked as it assaulted her eyes - but she didn't have time to appreciate it, as Wolf was already dragging her out of the safe room, the one that should have been covered up long ago but _hadn't_ \- "Come _on!"_

He slammed the door behind them. A second later, Zelda heard a distinct _whump _as something very big and very heavy collided with it.

"Thank God," she said weakly, half-wondering if Wolf would get annoyed if she tried to hug him. "We're safe."

Wolf took a moment to catch his breath before replying. "Yeah, I get why Ganon put us in there now - he was hoping old 'Trap would get us."

"Old who?"

And then Zelda heard the voice - faraway, but unmistakable.

"You see, I've finally found the one thing that scares you, Link."

She and Wolf exchanged horrified looks.

_Ganon, _he mouthed at her.

"I've finally found the Hero's one, fatal flaw."

Zelda started to walk. And then she started to run, Wolf close at her heels. Ganon was here, threatening Link - and that could only mean one thing.

"Do you want to know what it is, Link?"

Zelda skidded around a corner, heard Wolf right behind her. She had no idea where she was in the pizzeria - she only knew that she had to get to Link, before it was too late -

"You don't like the feeling of _weakness. _You don't like feeling powerless and alone. Helpless to save anyone... especially when it comes to your _little princess."_

Princess?

Zelda only had a moment to wonder what he was talking about before she heard it - Link's voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about -"

"Of course you don't. And you never will."

And then the voices went silent.

Zelda's heart thundered in her chest as she ran through the dining area, knocking aside chairs and tables in her wake - _please be okay please be okay - s_he could hear Wolf stumbling along hastily in her wake, but all her energy was focused on putting one foot in front of the other, getting to Link before that awful, awful man did -

A distinct click echoed through the pizzeria.

It took a moment for Zelda to understand what it was. And the realization came just as she turned the corner and ran into the office, and saw what Ganon was holding, and where it was pointed -

"NO!" she screamed, and threw herself forward, grabbing his hand -

\- the gun went off -

\- and then Ganon was on the floor, grunting in pain, the gun skittering out of his hand and across the floor. Zelda had tackled him.

She looked up to see if Link was all right - saw blood, and felt her heart stop in her chest - but then she realized it wasn't a gunshot wound, but a sizable gash on his forehead. He'd fallen out of his chair, hit his head on the ground and passed out.

But he hadn't gotten shot.

He was all right.

He was _all right._

Zelda breathed a sigh of relief as the realization came. He was okay, the bullet had missed him -

"_You_!" hissed Ganon. "You little - I _had him_! After all this time -" He shoved Zelda off him, so hard that her head hit the wall and she saw stars. When her vision cleared, he was upright again and seething with rage.

And now the gun was pointed at _her_.

"No more meddling," he snarled. "No more games."

Wolf appeared in the doorway, and Ganon swiveled the gun towards him. "_Don't you move!"_

"Okay - be cool," Wolf said, automatically raising his hands in surrender. "Let's all be cool here."

"Enough playing around," Ganon growled. "I'm done waiting." He couldn't seem to decide who he wanted to shoot first; the barrel of the gun moved to Zelda, then Wolf, then drifted back over to Zelda, finally settling on her forehead. "_You first."_

There was a blur of motion from the floor - Ganon roared in fury and stumbled, his aim going wild - Link had apparently chosen this moment to recover, and had grabbed Ganon's legs.

"Get _off _me!" Ganon bellowed, and kicked at Link's face. There was a nasty cracking sound, but Link kept his desperate hold on Ganon's legs - giving Zelda enough time to reach out and pluck the gun out of Ganon's hands.

"I'll take that."

"You _fools!"_ Ganon roared, and just for a moment, in his rage, he seemed to tower over all of them. "Do you not understand who you're dealing with? The powers that have fallen out of alignment because of our presence here?"

"What do you mean?" Zelda said sharply. "What powers?"

"You don't understand, do you?" Ganon hissed. "None of us were meant to be here, in this world. This has all been a _mistake - _a disgusting, inconvenient mistake. And it's all thanks to your stupid_ goddesses_ that I'm the one who has to deal with it."

"Do you know what he's talking about?" Zelda asked Wolf. He shrugged helplessly.

"_I _know."

The voice came from the floor, and everyone looked down in surprise. Link was climbing to his feet - white-faced and trembling, but still very much alive. Blood trickled down his face from the cut on his forehead, and from a fresh gash under his eye (apparently Ganon wore steel-toed boots) but he ignored it, his blue eyes wide with a slowly dawning realization.

"I get it now," he said, his voice filled with wonder as he looked at first Ganon, then Zelda. "I _remember_... I never did before..."

"No," Ganon breathed. "No, you can't - that's _impossible -_"

"You," said Link, very quietly. "You're... I remember. The King of Thieves."

"You can't possibly -"

"And you," Link said, looking at Zelda. "You're... you're the Princess."

Zelda frowned. "I'm the _what_?"

"And..." Link looked at Wolf, who stared back at him blankly. "Yes, I remember... you're..."

"_Enough!"_

Ganon looked positively murderous. Every part of his aspect screamed pure rage, so much so that Zelda and Wolf actually took a step backward. But Link held his ground, hands balled into fists, staring resolutely back at the man he now knew to be his eternal enemy.

"You've interfered and meddled for _hundreds of years_," Ganon said, low and dangerous. "But no more. Never again."

His hand shot out and smacked the right door button - both Zelda and Wolf, who had been standing in the right doorway, jumped backward instinctively, and too late realized their mistake. The door slammed down in their faces.

Now Link and Ganon were alone.

"It's just you and me now," Ganon said softly. "Your friends can't save you this time. What are you going to do, _Hero_?"


	16. Bonus Chapter: Suggestion Box

_AN: I don't usually do author's notes, but I felt the need to apologize for being away for so long. Here's a quick bonus chapter I whipped up as my apology. (Yes, this is inspired by Chapter Two of the rather creepy and somewhat-better-than-my-own fanfic "Abandoned By Disney." Go check it out - it'll make you never watch another Disney movie again, ever.)_

Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Suggestion Box

Suggestion: Hey. It's me, Mike. Y'know, the new night guard? Anyway, just wondering if you could maybe NOT put the robots in roaming mode at night. Kinda gives me the jeebies, you know? Kthanx.

Suggestion: found a hair in my pizza please advise

Suggestion: The pizza in this place sux

Suggestion: Your prices are really high. Could you maybe adjust for inflation?

Suggestion: Hey, it's Pete. There's a weird smell coming from behind the Pirate's Cove curtain, and customers are complaining - should I do something about this? thanks

Suggestion: Mike again. Apparently no one received my last suggestion so I'm filing another one. Can you PLEASE turn off the robots at night?

Suggestion: spilled my drink in the lounge can someone take care of that

Suggestion: Okay, listen up you management jerks - if someone does not turn off those robots I will file an official complaint, instead of just writing suggestions. Comprendes?

Suggestion: And the fox, man. What's up with the freaking fox?

Suggestion: the pizza, man. fix it

Suggestion: Link here - who spilled their goddamn drink in the lounge? Man, being janitor SUCKS.

Suggestion: Mike again. One of those things almost got in my office last night. Is anyone even reading these cards?

Suggestion: Prices are way too high. Can I talk to a manager about this?

Suggestion: okay srsly guys, if i find another hair in my food i'm going to call the health department

Suggestion: Hey, it's Pete again. Was cleaning the floors and found a locked door labeled "Safe Room." Is that in case of a hurricane or something? please reply

Suggestion: it's too hard to breathe in here

Suggestion: Mike again. Guys, this is getting ridiculous. Stupid fox won't leave me alone at night - I'm going to go disable them myself if this keeps up.

Suggestion: Pete here. Asked manager about the safe room, he flipped out and fired me on the spot. What the hell?

Suggestion: pizza is gross

Suggestion: Jake here. Guys, stop putting blank suggestion cards in the box. These things are expensive, okay?

Suggestion: its mike

Suggestion: they're coming i hear them

Suggestion: someone help me please

Suggestion: It's Jake. Seriously, whoever keeps putting blank cards in, _ stop it._

Suggestion: Link here. People keep spilling shit in the lounge. Either replace the carpets or put up a sign, okay?

Suggestion: Oh my God, I saw what was in the safe room

Suggestion: it has eyes

Suggestion: ENOUGH WITH THE BLANK CARDS.

Suggestion: It's Link. All right, you remember the spills in the lounge? I swear I clean one up, and then I turn around and there's another one. They smell kinda funny, too. Is it something in the carpet? Would really appreciate some follow-up here.

Suggestion: hey, you know what would be great? if the chef wore a hair net

Suggestion: If I find _one more blank card_ I am phasing out the suggestion box, no questions asked.

Suggestion: toilet in the girls bathroom is clogged again. can someone fix that

Suggestion: Seriously, the pizza prices are ridiculous.

Suggestion: mommy says the fox is out of order. i like the fox what happened to him

Suggestion: Link again. Okay, so I steam-cleaned the crap out of those carpets and the stain _still_ won't go away. Can someone help me out here?

Suggestion: Never mind, Janet told me to use bleach

Suggestion: Jake here. Kids are complaining about the smell from the animatronics, please advise.

Suggestion: Hello. I scheduled a birthday party for my child, but when I arrived they told me the animatronics were down for maintenance and couldn't perform. My child was really looking forward to it - can you please explain?

Suggestion: the thing in the safe room

Suggestion: i can hear it

Suggestion: Why isn't anyone allowed in the kitchen?

Jake sighed as he overturned the suggestion box and emptied its contents. The employees always took turns doing this near closing time - it was part of the job to address the concerns of the customers, after all. Not that he liked it very much.

_Let's see - more complaints about the pizza, some grousing from the janitor... typical_. But as he sifted through the cards, one at the very bottom of the pile caught his eye.

Suggestion: i am still here

Jake was still staring at the card when he heard a loud curse word from behind him. He turned; the janitor was making a face as he mopped up a small mountain of chip crumbs. "Little brat," he was grumbling. "Just drops 'em on the floor and steps on them... like I don't have anything better to do..."

Jake looked down at the key ring clipped to his belt. He looked back up at the janitor.

Well... he _did _need a replacement night guard.

He started to make his way over to the restaurant's youngest employee, tucking the card into his pocket.

Time to start again.

"Hey. Janitor."


	17. The Flaw in the Plan

**6:21 AM, NIGHT 5**

Ganon had never planned on it going like this.

Sure, he'd expected Wolf to find some way to escape - the boy was good at things like that, it was why Ganon had hired him in the first place - and yes, he'd known ahead of time that rusty old Spring Bonnie (or whatever that thing's name was) might not be able to finish them off.

But still.

He'd had Link right where he wanted him, and that stupid _Princess _had intervened. Again.

And now... well, now he had Link alone again. Really alone this time. In a small, confined space, with no Master Sword or light spirits or any of that fairy boy's usual tricks.

Now, at long last, he could settle this _his _way. On his terms.

...Even though the boy remembered his past lives now. That was a little annoying. But if things went his way tonight, it wouldn't matter before long. Soon he'd be rid of this boy for good - provided that he could stall Link for a while, keep him talking. Figure out just how much the boy knew, how much he remembered.

Or he could just kill him. That would be fun, too.

He regarded Link now - his mortal enemy, the one boy who had singlehandedly ended him more times than either of them could count. Link was scared out of his mind, Ganon knew; it wasn't hard to see how badly he was trembling, a bead of blood rolling down his cheek and plopping onto his shirt. But there he stood anyway. Hands balled into fists (_how adorable, that he thinks he can kill me with blows alone_), breathing long and slow to conserve oxygen. Blue eyes burning in the near-darkness.

Those wretched eyes. How Ganon wished he could tear them out of their sockets.

And yet... something about this Hero was _different _than the others.

Ganon didn't know what it was. Maybe he had slightly less pronounced ears, maybe it was the modern clothes.

Or maybe it was because this was the first time he'd seen Link afraid.

Link shook Ganon out of his thoughts. "Well?" His voice cracked a little, but the challenge was clear. "Are you going to kill me, or what?"

"Do you _want _to die?" Ganon snapped.

Link shrugged. "I've died before," he said nonchalantly. "If my memories are right, anyway."

"You talk about death lightly, for someone who's dealt it out so many times."

"Look who's talking," Link shot back.

Ganon ground his teeth. This boy was just as infuriating as he remembered; he dearly wished that the stupid Princess hadn't taken his gun. "Do you _ever _shut up?"

"Maybe not." Link edged to the left. Ganon stalked fluidly to the right, mirroring his motions perfectly.

"You haven't changed much, after all this time," Ganon said. "A shame, really. I was hoping you'd be a bit more manageable."

He made a sudden move forward. Link automatically stepped back, intimidated by the advance; when Ganon made as if to follow him, the Hero grabbed the swivel chair and planted it between them like a shield. "Don't come any closer."

"Why not?" Ganon said lazily. "Don't you want to fight this out? Finish this the _honorable_ way?"

"This isn't honorable," Link shot back. "You trapped me in an airtight room with no weapons."

"I see," Ganon mused. "Like always, you insist on hiding behind swords and shields. And this from the same boy who once wrestled a three-hundred-pound Goron with his bare hands and a pair of _boots_."

Link was about to ask how Ganon knew about that, but Ganon took advantage of Link's confusion, and the Hero barely managed to duck in time - a punch whistled through the air where his head had been a few seconds earlier.

"Agile, as always," Ganon commented. "Annoying."

Link slunk into a different corner of the office, watching Ganon for cues on what he would do next. He remembered that in past battles, Ganon's one, fatal flaw was that he telegraphed all his moves - his muscles would bunch briefly, or his eyes would flash. Link himself had once been chided for that - although not by Ganon. Wait, who had that been...?

Ganon charged. The bonebreaking punch that slammed into Link's collarbone felt like a freight train, sending Link sprawling to the ground - he hurriedly rolled to the side as Ganon made to stamp on his fingers.

"What's this?" Ganon hissed, watching him with supreme, godlike amusement. "The little boy doesn't remember his fighting skills?"

Link was confused. He remembered easily besting Ganon in the past - why was he so weak now? He shakily propped himself up against the wall, massaging his bruised trachea, trying to predict what Ganon would do next.

But Ganon was devastatingly unpredictable. A hard punch caught Link on the jaw; Ganon's next blow came too fast for the eye to follow, delivering a solid kick to Link's stomach that sent him to the ground again. "You _don't_ remember, do you!" crowed Ganon. "So the little Hero's memory isn't perfect after all. How _cute._"

Gasping, spitting out blood, Link crawled desperately across the office floor. If he could just get under the desk, behind the chair, _someplace _that might offer protection -

Ganon's amused gaze followed him. "I was hoping you would present more of a challenge. It would have been so much more... I don't know... _satisfying._"

Link finally made it to the chair. With some effort, he managed to leverage himself awkwardly against it, dragging his aching body back into a standing position to face Ganon once again.

"Are you _still _willing to fight me?" Ganon sounded genuinely surprised. "Because it's really not that fun anymore. You might as well just give up. I've got this _lovely_ suit in the back room that I've been saving just for you..."

Link coughed, and blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. "Never," he forced out.

"What a shame," Ganon said, not even bothering to act like he meant it. "Your other friends looked so good in theirs... you remember them, don't you?"

"Remember who?"

"The ones who were reborn along with us," Ganon said, in the patient voice one uses to speak with children. "What, you don't remember? I started with them, you know. I saved you for last - you were my biggest prize, after all."

"...What the hell are you talking about?"

"Well, I had to get rid of them all somehow. And what better than to offer them a job at this run-down old place?" Ganon smiled, and just for a moment, Link saw the glint of madness in his eyes. "I was going to save Zelda for last, at first. But then I thought, why not finish off both of you at once? And that stupid programmer boy, too?" He barked out a short, manic laugh. "Three Keese with one stone..."

Link swallowed. However cordial and even-tempered Ganon had been before, that man was gone now. The frustration at all the times Link had eluded him, the slowly growing madness - it was finally coming to the surface.

Ganon's cold voice shook him out of his thoughts. "But enough about the past. Let's return to the present... I have a job to finish."

Link knew that he couldn't take Ganon on. Not when Ganon was at full strength, having recovered his memories long ago; and Link was still so weak, having only just remembered.

But he stood there anyway, facing down his enemy. If he couldn't win, then by Hylia, he would _die trying._

Ganon twisted as though to throw a new punch - Link tensed to dodge, and it was just then that he had an idea.

Throughout this entire fight, Ganon had been staying close to the right door. Probably to make sure Link didn't hit the button and let Wolf and Zelda back in. But if Link could lure him away from it, just for a second...

Link faked to the left, purposefully stumbling a little to emphasize his injuries. Sure enough, Ganon followed him.

"Getting tired, Hero?"

"No," Link said, making his voice crack a little. _That's right. I'm weak, I'm tired. Come and get me._

Ganon stalked forward suddenly, and Link edged away, waiting for his opening. He could duck past Ganon now, but that was too risky - not when Ganon was this angry. Maybe if...

In one fluid motion, Ganon grabbed the swivel chair and hurled it. Surprised, Link barely managed to dodge away in time - it smashed into the wall behind him.

"Oh, I miss the days when that would have been a boulder," Ganon said lazily.

"You're taking an awfully long time to kill me," Link reminded him.

Ganon's eyes narrowed. "Am I? I'll have to remedy that."

But Link was beginning to notice a pattern. Ganon loved putting Link in harrowing danger, but he never _quite _got around to killing him. He claimed it was because Link amused him.

And yet... what if it was something more?

What if, for some twisted reason, he was afraid of what might happen if he finally _won?_

Maybe, Link mused, it would break something important in the time-space continuum. Maybe his death would reset whatever cycle he and Ganon had been trapped in for hundreds of years, and a new Link would be born. It was a strange thought... but possible.

Time to test his theory.

"You can't kill me, can you?"

Ganon scowled. "What are you talking about?"

"You're afraid," Link said. "You don't know what's going to happen if you do."

"Stop talking nonsense and fight," Ganon spat.

"You talk big," Link said, growing more confident with every word. "But deep down, you're still a coward, like you always were. The gods never let you have the full Triforce... because you didn't have the courage to wield it." Yes, that word sounded right - the Triforce. It brought a lot of Link's memories to the surface, although he couldn't quite recall why it was important, or what it had to do with him and Ganon -

"Quite your yammering," Ganon snapped. "Just a few minutes ago, _you _were the one quaking in your boots. How could you deserve to wield the Triforce, you snivelling little rodent?"

"Because..." Link faltered for a moment. Why _had _he been able to wield the Triforce?

"I'll tell you why. It was a _mistake. _Just like the mistake that brought us here. You and I, we were never supposed to live in this timeline," Ganon hissed. "But your precious Golden Goddesses put us here anyway."

"The goddesses never make mistakes -"

"_Yes they do! _Can you not understand that? You, and Zelda, and all the rest of them. A _mistake._"

"How do you know that?" Link shot back. "How do you know this isn't what the goddesses intended? That maybe, just maybe, you and I were destined to end up here all along?"

"My poor little Hero, surely you've noticed that Hyrule is long dead."

"So what?"

"We were intended to die with Hyrule. The curse that reincarnates us - it was supposed to end when our bloodlines did. And yet here we are." Ganon's eyes glittered. "I wonder why that is?"

Link faltered a little. "Maybe our bloodlines haven't ended yet."

"Impossible," Ganon said coldly. "The blood of a god could not run through the veins of those hideous people who gave birth to me."

It was the first time Ganon had ever mentioned having parents, and for a moment Link was surprised. He'd never actually imagined Ganon as having a family - he'd always just pictured him emerging, fully grown, from some pit deep in the Underworld every few hundred years to wreak havoc upon the world.

But what Ganon was saying... could it actually be true? Had the goddesses never intended for them to be here?

"You see it now, don't you?" Ganon said, low and venomous. "This has all been some cosmic accident. You're not a Hero anymore... and I'm no god. But I intend to fix that."

"How?" Link demanded. "You don't have magic anymore. You lost your powers."

Ganon actually smiled. It was a chilling smile, one that sent cold fingers crawling up Link's spine.

"That's right," he said. "And that's why I need yours."


	18. Requiem

**6:35 AM, NIGHT 5**

"Are you _sure _this is safe?"

Wolf barely glanced at her. "What, you don't trust me?"

"It's just..." Zelda wrung her hands anxiously. "I've never done anything like this before."

Wolf, who was in the process of picking the lock on the basement door, gave her an incredulous look. "Never?"

Zelda bit her lip. Now that she thought about it, she really _hadn't _been in any kind of trouble, whether at school or at home. She'd always been a good student, a fair athlete - pretty much a natural at anything she tried. No detentions, tardies or unexcused absences to her name, no sir.

And Wolf... well, if what he'd told her was true, he'd been a troublemaker at school, had gotten dreadful grades, failed P.E. He was her polar opposite. Her antithesis, in a way.

Her thoughts drifted back to earth as she watched him fiddle with the lock. She was almost afraid to ask him where he'd learned lockpicking skills - she had a sneaking suspicion that Ganon had taught him - but it turned out to be unnecessary.

"Damnit," he muttered. "I can't get it..."

"Do you need -"

"No," he snapped.

Zelda waited patiently as he struggled with the doorknob, swearing at regular intervals. It was only when he threw the tools down in frustration that she dared to venture, "Maybe we need a plan B."

Wolf blew out an irritated breath. "Yeah, maybe."

Their first idea had been to break into the basement, where, if Wolf's memory of the building layout served, the generator was stored. If they turned the power off, it would open the doors and afford Link an escape route. But that plan had relied on Wolf's lockpicking expertise - which, apparently, was not as carefully honed as he'd assured her a few minutes ago.

The next idea had been to find some power tools and cut through the office doors. Which was ridiculous, of course, since the only place there would be any power tools was backstage, and they'd already come up empty on that front.

And now they were stumped.

Wolf picked at a scab on his thumb, apparently deep in thought. "Maybe," he said slowly, "we could get in through the... But that's crazy."

"What?"

"It's just..." He took a deep breath. "We could try sneaking in through the vents."

Zelda stared. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

"I thought it was a stupid idea," he said, a little defensively. "There's no air circulating in the building right now, if you've forgotten. It would be practically airtight in those tunnels."

"But we could try."

He sighed, drumming his fingers anxiously against his knee. "We could try," he said at length. "Although I can't guarantee it'll work."

Zelda's heart lifted. "How do we get into the ventilation system from here?"

"If I remember correctly, there should be..." He looked around helplessly. Thankfully, Zelda had sharper eyes than he did.

"Over there," she said, pointing. "There's a vent cover behind those shelves."

"Thank God for you," he said.

Ten minutes later, they'd pried the cover off - it had come away easier than Zelda had expected, perhaps because the screws securing it to the wall were so rusted - and were now staring into the darkness within. The space was just barely large enough for the two of them to fit, as long as they crouched and went single file.

"This could actually work," Wolf said; his guarded look had given away to excitement. "As long as we follow the vents into the office, this could work."

"Which way do we go?"

"That's a very good question." Wolf closed his eyes, trying to remember the blueprints he'd glimpsed on Ganon's computer a few months back. "I think... I think we go left for a while, and then we turn left again at the second juncture. And that should take us right into the office."

"Are you sure?"

"No," he admitted. "But hopefully Link can hold on until we get there."

With that, he crouched down, tucked in his elbows and crawled into the vent. "I'll scout ahead," he called over his shoulder.

"What happened to 'ladies first'?" Zelda asked, dropping to her knees to follow him.

"Do you really _want _to go first?" he countered.

No. No, she didn't.

Taking a deep breath and praying her claustrophobia wouldn't kick in, Zelda ducked into the vent.

Almost at once she regretted ever agreeing to this plan. The four walls seemed to be pressing in on her, like they were in the throat of some great beast - forcing down a mouthful of bile, Zelda started to crawl, following closely on the heels of Wolf's grubby sneakers. _Don't panic. It's going to be fine, it'll all be just fine._

"How you doing back there?" Wolf's voice made her jump.

"Fine," she said through gritted teeth. "Shut up and lead the way."

His laugh bounced back and forth across the metal walls. "Afraid of enclosed spaces, are we?"

Zelda took a gulp of stale air; tried to distract herself with quotes from Slaughterhouse Five. "_That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything?__"_

To her surprise, Wolf responded. "_Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"_

"_Yes."_

_"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."_

_"_You _do _read!" she exclaimed.

She could have sworn she saw him blush, although maybe it was the poor lighting. "Sometimes."

"You act like some big tough guy," she said. "But deep down, you're just a dirty little bookworm."

"Ha, ha," he said dryly. "Keep moving."

There was a polite little silence; the only sound was Zelda's elbows scraping against the sides of the vent and her soft, panicked breathing.

Then, perhaps to distract her, Wolf spoke again. "That was always one of my favorites," he said.

"The book?"

"Yeah. I used to read it every night before I went to bed."

Zelda smiled. "That's sweet."

She thought she saw him roll his eyes. "Don't go telling anyone I have feelings, all right?"

"I won't. I promise."

Just then there was a faint noise. Almost imperceptible - Zelda would never have heard it if she hadn't been listening for it.

Apparently Wolf had heard it too; he motioned urgently that they should stop talking.

_Do you think it's them? _Zelda mouthed.

_I don't know, _Wolf mouthed back. _Listen._

Words floated towards them, echoing from somewhere far away.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean, you worthless little urchin."

It was them. Zelda would know Link's voice anywhere; the second voice, so deep and menacing, must have been Ganon's.

"I don't have any magic," Link was saying, his voice tinged with fear. "I never did."

Wolf frowned. _Magic? _he mouthed at Zelda.

She didn't reply, so focused was she on straining her ears to catch snatches of the conversation.

"Of course you do. You've had it all along. Why do you think..." Ganon's next words were obscured by Wolf's breathing, but Zelda soon picked up the thread again. "...so many times? Do you think it was pure chance?"

"I -"

"_Mortals_," spat Ganon. "They think everything revolves around them..."

Wolf and Zelda both inched closer, towards the ventilation grate that was now only a few feet away; Ganon's muffled voice sharpened as they neared.

"I used to think I wanted to kill you, boy. And maybe I still do. But you have something I want, and I can't seem to make myself forget that." Ganon's sigh rattled through the grating. "So be it."

"What are you -" Link's voice rose in pitch. "Get away from me!"

"Maybe if I take it from you, I can get myself out of this hellhole of a timeline," Ganon mused aloud. "And if I can find whoever has the other...wait."

Ganon went quiet. Somehow it was even more terrifying than when he'd been shouting.

"No," Ganon whispered. "I was so sure... _how can you not have it?"_

_"_Don't have what?" Link sounded confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I thought - but I was so certain..." Ganon audibly ground his teeth. "Then where _is _it?"

"What -"

"The _Triforce, _you insolent boy! I was so sure you would..." He trailed off. "But no. I was jumping to conclusions. Of _course _you don't have it, you were afraid of me... So that means..."

Zelda, meanwhile, was bewildered. What was the Triforce? Why was Ganon making such a big deal out of it?

But Link seemed to know. "You don't have it either," he said. "Do you?"

"_Shut up,_" Ganon hissed.

"That's why you lost your magic! You don't have -"

"Quiet!" Ganon thundered. "You may remember the past, but you know nothing of the present."

Zelda saw his boots cross the room once, then twice; he seemed to be pacing in agitation.

"Well," he said at length. "It seems that you are, yet again, useless to me, Link. And I was so sure you'd be an asset to my plan... but no. You're just a worthless little boy, like you always were. So worthless that the Golden Goddesses didn't even bother to give you a piece of the Triforce this time around."

"They didn't give _you _one, either," Link pointed out.

"That was just another mistake," Ganon snarled. "One that will soon be remedied, if all goes according to plan."

"You know, you keep talking about this master plan of yours, but I've never seen any hint that it's actually _working._"

Ganon was silent.

It occurred to Zelda then that maybe, just maybe, Ganon _didn't _have a plan.

"What?" Link said, as though reading Zelda's mind. "Have you lost your scheming along with your powers?"

"It's just..." Suddenly Ganon sprang into motion, kicking the swivel chair and sending it flying across the room. "_It wasn't supposed to be this way!" _he raged. "You weren't even supposed to _be _here! None of us are! I can't do this, I can't..." Then he sank to his knees, dragging his hands through his hair.

Zelda stared. Was Ganon actually showing weakness?

It seemed clear to Link, too, that Ganon's blustering bravado had run out. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm not happy about it either," he hedged. "I miss my sword. I miss Ordon, and the Kokiri, and Skyloft. I miss everything."

"You have no idea what it's like to lose something," Ganon snarled. "Not when you've never lost a fight."

"But I _have _lost fights," Link said. "Plenty of them."

"I'm sure," Ganon muttered.

There was a tense silence. No one seemed sure what to do about Ganon suddenly being... well, _human. _Zelda held perfectly still in the vent, hardly daring to breathe; she could feel Wolf's breath on her neck just behind her. Link hovered in the middle of the office, as though unsure whether he wanted to kill Ganon or comfort him.

Finally Link made up his mind.

"Look," he began, hesitantly. "Maybe we can help each other."

"Why would I accept help from _you?_" Ganon spat.

"Because we both want the same thing," Link said. "To get home."

"It's impossible," Ganon growled. "I've tried. It can't be done."

"How do you know? Maybe there's something you haven't tried yet." When Ganon didn't respond, Link edged forward. "Maybe we can work together."

Ganon shook his head, like an elephant bothered by flies.

"I can help you."

Link moved a little closer, until he was close enough to touch Ganon - and that was when Ganon lunged.

Blood sprayed across the floor of the office; Zelda opened her mouth to scream, but Wolf clamped a hand over her mouth. _"_Shhh!"

Zelda made a strangled choking sound, unable to do anything but watch as Link slumped to the ground, his mouth frozen in an expression of surprise, one hand scrabbling at the knife plunged hilt-deep into his breastbone -

\- and Ganon towered over him, an expression of utter triumph shining on his face. The same mad, twisted triumph that had been there when he'd killed five children in a desperate attempt to rid the world of this Hero, and now - now _he'd finally done it_.

He knelt over Link's still form, chest heaving with his victory, and breathed,

"_You can't._"


	19. Broken, Beautiful Things

The first thing he was aware of was a dim light behind his eyelids.

Then a tingling sensation started in his limbs, which gave way to feeling as blood rushed back to places it had been long absent. He wiggled his fingers a few times, just to make sure he still had them, and then started to stretch his legs - only to have his feet bang up against a cool metal surface.

Confused, he opened his eyes. He blinked a few times to make his eyes adjust to what he suddenly realized was darkness.

Where was he? The last thing he remembered was... was...

He closed his eyes. For some reason he couldn't recall how he'd gotten here, or why.

A thought that had been meandering around his consciousness for a while finally reached fruition. _I must be dead._

But no, that didn't feel right. He could feel his heart pulsing in his chest, could feel air swelling in his chest with every breath. If this was death, then it felt an awful lot like living.

He waited a while, letting his pupils dilate; finally shapes appeared around him. A mop. A bucket. Cleaning supplies. Was he in some kind of maintenance closet?

_It almost feels like..._

A fist pounded on the door. "Yo, Linkinator! Are you sleeping on the job again, bro?"

He blinked stupidly up at the slit between wall and door. "What?"

"Get up, sleepyhead! We've got work to do before this place opens. I wanna test out some of the equipment, make sure nothing catches on fire, eh Link?" A laugh, followed by footsteps. They were leaving.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, shaking the pins and needles out of his arms. The voice didn't sound familiar, but clearly whoever was speaking knew _him. _What was it they'd called him? Link?

_Link..._

The name had an odd feel to it, like it belonged to someone else.

Link pushed the closet door open and stepped out into a blast of cool air - almost at once, he was struck by the extreme dilapidation of his surroundings. Everywhere he looked there was peeling paint, flickering lights, broken-down arcade games; the corners bristled with cobwebs, indicating that the cleaning supplies Link had seen earlier hadn't been used in some time. The whole place had an eerie green cast to it, splashing sickly color onto Link's skin. How on earth had he ended up here?

And why did it seem so familiar?

"Hey, bro!" came an overexcited voice. "Finally done counting sheep? I've got some awesome new stuff to show you."

Link's heart jumped a little; he'd been too busy looking at the walls to notice the lanky man coming up behind him. Everything about the guy was laid-back_ \- _he had a lazy, rollicking gait and a relaxed posture, so that he looked six inches shorter than he actually was. The only part of his face that was animated was his eyes; they shone with perpetual excitement, darting earnestly across Link's features as though he was the most interesting thing in the world.

"Uh... cool," Link managed.

"You bet it is! We dug up some more relics over the weekend, and we're, like, talking to a former employee who's got a really good lead!" The man lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Did you know there used to be _secret rooms _in this place?"

"No..."

"Well, we're gonna see if we can dig 'em up. I bet they're just, like, _full _of old stuff we can use..." The man was practically vibrating with excitement. "Anyway, c'mere - let me show you all the new stuff I put in. I've got this really creepy ambience I'm gonna play over the speakers when people come in, and I bought some strobe lights on eBay for the hallways. Cool stuff, right? Like, this attraction is gonna _rock._"

"Yeah..." Link was utterly bewildered. He couldn't remember ever meeting this man, yet the guy was talking to him like they were best friends. And what on earth did he mean by 'attraction'?

The man, meanwhile, was chattering on good-naturedly as he led Link down the hallway. "So we're still looking for a really good relic - you know, the star of the attraction. We gotta have a real one, there's no doubt about that. I'm not going to take any replicas or rebuilds, you know? Like, I want the real deal."

"What do you mean?" Link asked.

The man gave him a look like he was delusional. "A real animatronic. What did you think I was talking about, the paper plate dolls?" He laughed at his own joke.

But Link's mind was spinning. Something about that word had triggered something in his memory, which had triggered something else, which had kickstarted something else and suddenly -

\- suddenly he _knew._

"Oh my God," he said aloud.

The guy blinked. "What?"

Link's hands instinctively went to his collarbone, where Ganon had plunged his knife. No blood, no scar. It was like it had never happened.

But... but how?

"What year is it?" Link said urgently.

The guy blinked at him. "Are you feeling okay, Linkinator? You're all pale."

"_Tell me what year it is!"_

Looking bewildered, the man told him.

Link stumbled and had to grab the wall for support.

It had been _thirty years._

How could it be possible? There was no way he'd survived that stab wound - and a quick look down at himself revealed that he was the same age he'd been when he'd... well, there was no other way to put it. When he'd died.

Unless...

"Do you have a mirror?" Link asked.

The guy stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Just give me a mirror. Please."

Hesitantly, the man drew a phone out of his pocket - a sleek, streamlined phone, far from the clunky corded phones Link remembered so well. "Here," he said, offering it to Link. "Use the screen."

Link took it and stared at his own reflection. It was hard to make out on the dark glass, but it didn't take much detail to tell Link that he looked different.

His face, once soft and boyish, had hardened, with sharp edges and neatly defined cheekbones. His hair had taken on a muted brownish shade, far from the bright yellow-blond it had once been. But he still had those gently sloping ears, the ones marking him as a Hylian.

And yet... he looked older. Like he'd been through some horrible ordeal and had grown stronger because of it - which, in some bizarre, twisted way, he had.

There was only one explanation.

_The cycle has started again, _he thought, with a thrill of horror. _I've been reincarnated._

At least he had all his memories this time. But if he'd been reborn, then that could mean... he was almost afraid to consider it, but what if Ganon had been reborn, too? Would Link even be able to recognize him? And, for that matter, would Ganon recognize_ Link_?

Or maybe Ganon was the same. Maybe Wolf and Zelda - wherever they were now - hadn't been able to defeat him thirty years ago, and he was still out there somewhere, hunting down the pieces of the Triforce so that he, and he alone, could return home.

What _had _happened that night, anyway? Had Ganon killed Wolf and Zelda, too? Oh God, he didn't even want to contemplate that.

Well, he'd have to lay low until he got some answers. He tried to keep his expression neutral as he gave the phone back to the man, who pocketed it with an expression of concern. "Are you all right, Linkinator?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Link said. "I was just... I got confused for a second."

To his relief, the man shrugged it off. "I have those days, man. You wanna go see the new features now?"

"All right," Link said. It wasn't like he had much of a choice, not if he wanted to convince this man that he was the same Link he'd been yesterday.

The man led him down to the end of the hallway, where a faded EXIT sign glowed. "All right, now stand here. I gotta see if the speakers work." Then, over his shoulder, "Yo, Ghost! Crank it up!"

An earsplitting screech scraped against Link's ears - he winced. "What the hell?"

"Good, it works," the man said, beaming and motioning for the unseen Ghost to turn it off. "That'll be the jumpscare part - where the animatronic pops out at the very end, and everybody freaks out."

"Great," Link said weakly, rubbing his ears. "I'm sure it'll work perfectly."

"Oh yeah - Ghost! Play him the other audio we dug up."

And then an all-too-familiar voice floated through the halls.

_"Hello! Welcome to your new career as a performer slash entertainer for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."_

It was Jake's voice.

"Ghost says these are, like, training tapes from the old restaurant," the man said, with a little more enthusiasm than Link thought was warranted. "I mean, dude - these are, like, prehistoric! It'll really make it more authentic, you know?"

"Yeah," Link said. He was starting to get an idea of what was going on here - these men were making some kind of horror attraction out of the restaurant's remains. But there was still anothing lingering question here, one that Link was hesitant to ask in case they started getting suspicious.

He was just pondering how to ask it when Ghost stepped out of the office.

Their eyes met, and Link's heart jumped into his mouth.

_Wolf._

It couldn't have been anyone else. Those grey eyes, the hood pulled up over his hair, the slow, loping gait. Except this Wolf was ever-so-slightly different now, just like Link was - small irregularities here and there. The face was a little more pale and drawn, the fingers a little longer. And Link certainly didn't remember the old Wolf having a penchant for music, but this Wolf had lime-green headphones around his neck.

But he was still Wolf. Of that, Link was certain.

And yet... why had he been reincarnated, too? There had never been anyone named Wolf in Hyrule, at least not anyone who'd been important to its history.

Maybe Wolf had just been an alias?

Whatever the case, Wolf/Ghost betrayed no hint that he recognized Link. "Our whistleblower gave us the location of the safe room," he said to the man. "We should be able to dig out whatever's in there by tomorrow."

"Awesome," the man said emphatically. "I can't wait to see what's in there... what if that was where they put all the animatronics?"

"Maybe," Wolf said noncomittally. He then turned to Link, who was still staring at him in disbelief. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," Link said hurriedly.

"That reminds me," the other man said. "Link, you wanna stay here overnight to test all the electronics? Y'know - make sure everything's working before we go knocking down walls."

It sounded too much like Jake's casual offer from the last time - _hey Link, you wanna work the night shift? Just one night, I promise - _that it made Link nervous. "No thanks," he said hurriedly. "I'll pass."

"Really? You've been doing it for months now," Wolf said, giving him a strange look. "We did hire you to play the night guard, after all." When Link failed to react, he elaborated, "You know - sit in the office when the people come by? Act like you're scared?"

"...Oh," Link said. "I forgot. Yeah, I'll stay here tonight." Damnit, pretending like he had memories of these people was harder than he thought.

Then again, at least there wouldn't be murderous robots coming after him this time. That, at least, was a welcome change.

"Thanks, bro," the man said, shaking Link out of his thoughts. "I can finally get some sleep. Ghost, you gonna stay and show him the ropes?"

"Sure," Wolf said. "I've got nothing else to do tonight."

The man winked. "That's what I like to hear. 'Night, boys." With that, he heaved open the door under the EXIT sign and left.

The moment he was out of earshot, Link whirled. "Wolf," he said urgently. "What the hell is going on?"

Wolf stared uncomprehendingly. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I'm..." Link trailed off, seeing Wolf's confused expression.

Oh.

_He doesn't remember._

So this really was a new version of Wolf... which meant that at some point, the old Wolf had died. And that meant...

_Zelda..._

No. He wasn't even going to think about it.

"Wolf - or Ghost, or whatever," he said urgently. "You have to remember. Don't you know me?"

Wolf stared. "My name isn't Wolf."

"But it was," Link said. "At least, I think it was. I mean - Ghost can't be your real name, right?"

"'Course it's not," Wolf said. "Don't be stupid."

"Well, will it bother you if I call you Wolf?"

"Uh... no, I guess not."

"Wolf, do you remember me?"

"Of course I do," Wolf said, giving him a strange look. "You're Link. You work here, like I do."

"That's not what I'm talking about," Link said, raking his hands through his hair in desperation. "You... never mind. This is pointless. Just show me how to work the equipment, okay?"

"...All right," Wolf said, clearly bewildered. "Well, here's where you'll be sitting when the attraction opens." He gestured to an all-too-familiar swivel chair. "You'll be watching the cameras, pretending to be the night guard. And as the night goes on, you're gonna pretend like you're freaked out, just to keep the customers on edge."

"Right," Link said, sitting down in the chair. "How do I check the cameras?"

"With this," Wolf said, plopping a sleek white laptop into Link's lap - nothing like the ancient black one he'd been accustomed to. "Unfortunately our boss got a little overexcited with the whole 'keep shit original' thing, and he's bought us thirty-year-old monitoring equipment... the jackass," he muttered under his breath. Link grinned to himself. Even after three decades, Wolf's personality hadn't changed.

"And here's your other monitor, where you'll check to make sure all the equipment is functioning. You know - the ventilation, the speakers, that kinda thing." Wolf went on, switching to a different program on the laptop. "Like I said, all this stuff is old as dirt, so it'll probably break down a lot. Just be prepared."

"What do I do if that happens?"

"Just reboot it. It should work fine after that," Wolf sighed. "I've tried to shore up the old programs, but they're full of bugs, and it'll take me weeks to write new ones from scratch, so... we're sticking with this shit, I guess." He shrugged. "Anyway, that's the lowdown. Any questions, or can I go back to fixing the speakers?"

"No, you go ahead," Link said. "I'll stay here and try everything out."

He waited until Wolf left the office, then started fiddling with the laptop. Thankfully the future still had Internet, although it was far faster than Link remembered - maybe they'd gotten rid of dial-up.

He Googled "freddy fazbear's pizza."

It didn't take long to find an informative newspaper article detailing the restaurant's fate. Apparently there'd been some other weird incidents at the pizzeria besides the missing children, and it had led to the place shutting down; the owner, a certain Mandrag Ganon, had not been available for comment.

A cold finger touched the back of Link's neck. _So he's still alive._

He'd expected it, somehow, but it unnerved him all the same.

What else could he dig up in six hours? He looked for the names of former employees, half-wondering if he could find a familiar name. Sure enough, it mentioned J. Richards, former head of security; but there were a few other names Link didn't recognize, like G. Hammond (former head of customer service) and Z. Tyler (Link couldn't find what their job had been).

Weird.

Link closed out of the Web and opened the monitoring software. He clicked "Play Audio", just to see what it did - an unnerving child's voice rang out from the speakers. "Hello?"

"Dude!" Wolf yelled from somewhere in the building. "You scared the shit out of me!"

"Sorry," Link called back, even though he wasn't.

He cycled through the cameras, just to get a feel for them; he half-wondered why there were cameras in the vents, but maybe they were just being extra careful. Actually, now that he thought about it, there were a _lot _of cameras in this place. Was the boss worried about something?

Wolf reentered the office with a toolbox under his arm. "You getting the hang of it yet?"

"Yeah, but why do we need actual cameras? I mean, I get that it has to be authentic and all, but..."

"I dunno. Ask Jim, not me," Wolf said, with a helpless shrug.

Ah. So Mr. Excited's name was Jim. Link filed that away for future reference and asked, "What's the creepy little boy's voice for?"

"Freak people out," Wolf said nonchalantly. "There used to be an animatronic in one of the old locations who made that sound. The idea is that it'll bring back patrons' memories in the worst possible way."

"Ah," Link said. Then he hesitated. "Why is Jim so into this project? I mean... he just seems so..."

"Overenthusiastic?" Wolf finished. "Who knows. I'm just here because I can't find work anywhere else." With that, he set the toolbox down on the desk. "Well, I fixed that speaker over on CAM 07. I'm done for the day. You heading out, too?"

"Well, I kinda promised Jim I'd stay..."

Wolf shrugged. "Suit yourself. It'll be kinda boring, though."

"I hope so," Link said.

Wolf gave him an odd look as he left. Link felt a little thrill of anxiety as he heard the doors lock.

He was alone again, with no way out. Just like last time.

Well, at least there would be no animatronics, he thought as he cycled lazily through the cameras. And he'd have plenty of time to research the restaurant's history. After all, Wolf had mentioned something about an older location, one that had existed long before the Fazbear's that Link knew - had Ganon known about that one, too? Who had owned it?

And, most disturbingly of all, what had happened to it?

Link couldn't help it. He reclined in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and started digging.


	20. First Shift

Link had been scouring the Internet for hours, and he still couldn't find anything on the old location.

No newspaper articles, no blogs, no journals, nothing. Had there been some kind of massive cover-up that he didn't know about? It almost made him wonder if something had happened there, just like something had happened at the location Link was familiar with. But he was almost afraid to wonder what it was.

Either way, he was now sitting in a run-down horror attraction at three o'clock in the morning with nothing to do. Now that Wolf's cheery (well, sort of cheery) presence had departed, an eerie atmosphere had overtaken the building, and the empty animatronic shells glowering in every corner weren't helping.

Nevertheless, Link was utterly calm as he played around with the monitoring equipment, feeling secure in the knowledge that he was alone in the attraction. It was kind of nice, actually - he finally had some time to think, to mull over his new self and new surroundings.

He still couldn't quite believe it. That on that night thirty years ago, he, Link, had _died._

With a massive effort, he shoved the memory out of his mind. He refused to dwell on it any further - it had happened, and he couldn't change it. All he could do now was figure out what the aftermath had been, and what had happened to his friends.

And for that matter... what had happened to Jake?

It was odd, but now that Link thought about it, he hadn't seen his pudgy friend since his fourth night at the pizzeria. But if Wolf had been reborn, and he'd claimed to be Jake's son in the past, then it was pretty compelling evidence that Jake had been reincarnated, too.

Or maybe he hadn't, and Link was just trying to draw parallels where none existed.

His thoughts meandered back to Wolf. There had to be a reason why he was here - it was just too much of a coincidence that they had been reunited in almost the same location, after thirty years of (presumably) never seeing each other. And for that matter, why was Wolf here, but Zelda wasn't?

Link wanted to throw the laptop across the office in frustration. He hated not knowing. He hated feeling powerless to do anything but play the part of a boy named Link that he'd never met, waiting on tenterhooks for the day that Wolf's memories returned. If that day ever came.

Why had the goddesses put him here, in this ancient, rotting place thirty years after his last death? There was nothing for him to do here.

...Unless there _was._

Maybe there was a purpose to all of this - maybe he'd been reborn in this place and time for a reason. As if there was something he had to do. Something he'd left unfinished in his last life.

But what, he thought with a feeling of helpless desperation, was it?

He let his thoughts drift back to the matter at hand. He had a job to do, after all - he needed to test out all the equipment before Jim came back. A quick tap of the mouse brought up the camera interface; everything seemed to be working. He played the creepy "Hello?" again, which made a shiver crawl up and down his spine. Then he rebooted a few of the programs the way Wolf had shown him, listening to the clank of the ventilation as it resumed circulating air around the building.

It reminded him of the time Ganon had shut the air off in the building on Link's fifth night. Link made a mental note to himself: _always keep the ventilation on._

Everything seemed to be functioning all right. Which, of course, meant that Link had nothing to do again.

Then he remembered the tape Wolf had played earlier, the one with Jake's voice - maybe there was something important on it, something that Jake hadn't mentioned in his earlier phone calls to Link.

Besides, it would be kind of funny listening to Jake trying to sound professional.

So, more out of curiosity than anything, Link opened the file.

"_Hello! Welcome to your new career as a performer slash entertainer for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."_

Blah, blah. He'd heard almost the exact same spiel the day he was hired as a janitor.

_"These tapes will provide you with much needed information on how to handle, climb into and climb out of mascot suits. Right now, we have two specially designed suits that double as both animatronics and suits."_

Spring Bonnie and Fredbear, presumably.

"_So please pay close attention while learning how to operate these suits, as accidents slash death slash irreparable and grotesque maiming can occur."_

Wait, what?

_"To change the animatronics to suit mode, insert and turn firmly the hand crank provided by the manufacturer. Turning the crank will compress the animatronic parts around the sides of the suit, providing room to climb inside. Please make sure the spring locks are fastened tightly to ensure the animatronic devices remain safe. We will cover this in more detail in tomorrow's session. Remember to smile; you are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."_

A soft click. The recording was over.

But it had confirmed something Jake had mentioned to Link earlier: that employees used to be able to climb inside the animatronics and wear them as suits. But Jake had made the process sound easy. Why, then, had someone gotten trapped inside?

Link clicked the next file.

_"Hello, hello." _Jake sounded considerably less upbeat than before. _"Today we will be continuing our training on proper suit-handling techniques."_

He droned on for a while about how to position one's head and torso while inside a suit, but it was the next part that caught Link's attention.

"_Try not to nudge or press against any of the spring locks inside the suit. Do not touch the spring locks at any time. Do not breathe on the spring locks, as moisture may loosen them and cause them to break loose."_

It sounded like the spring locks were awfully fragile. Why, then, had Jake taken such pains to reassure Link that the devices were perfectly safe? Something wasn't adding up here.

"_In case the spring locks come loose while you are wearing the suit, please try to maneuver away from populated areas before bleeding out."_

Holy shit.

_"As always, if there is ever an emergency, please go to the designated safe room. This room is hidden to customers, invisible to animatronics and is always off-camera. As always, remember to smile; you are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."_

So that was the safe room that Jim was so excited about finding. But Link had no idea why anyone in their right mind would go looking for it - it sounded like some kind of last-resort bunker, in case something bad happened. Who knew what could be hiding in there.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he clicked the last audio file.

_"Uh, hello." _Now Jake's voice shook with horror. _"Uh, there's been a slight change of company policy concerning use of the suits." _Pause. "_Uh, don't."_

Ah. So this recording was from after...

_"After learning of an unfortunate incident involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees. The classic suits are being retired to an appropriate location while being looked at by our technician."_

Link had to wonder if said technician was Wolf.

_"Until replacements arrive, you'll be expected to wear the temporary costumes provided to you. I repeat, the classic suits are not to be touched, activated or worn. As always, remember to smile; you are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza." _Click. The recording was over.

Link slowly closed the laptop and set it back on the desk. Somehow, he had a feeling that he'd heard something he shouldn't have.

He was still sitting there in a kind of frozen horror when his watch beeped. Six o' clock.

_Well, that was uneventful. _He was just getting out of his chair when the door banged open, making him jump.

"Yo, Linkinator!" Jim boomed. "How's everything working?"

Behind him, looking very groggy and annoyed, was Wolf. "I still don't see why you had to wake me up, Jim."

Jim ignored him. "Did the audio work all right? Nothing's broken?"

"Not that I could tell," Link said.

"Awesome, man. I'll get a team in here later this afternoon to open the safe room - then we can finally start planning our opening night!" Jim raised his fist. "Put 'er there!"

Link obediently bumped his fist with his knuckles. Then Jim turned to Wolf, who glowered in annoyance but did the same.

"All riiiiight!" Jim crowed, his sheer force of personality more than making up for their lack of enthusiasm. "Now let's get to work! I wanna put up those strobe lights - but Link, you've had a long night. You go home and get some shut-eye, alright? Be back here at midnight for your next shift."

"I'm looking forward to it," Link said wearily. He wasn't sure how long he'd have to continue this charade, but maybe if he stayed at it long enough, he could finally get some answers. And maybe he could find some way to make Wolf remember him.

And, for that matter, all of his past lives. Because for all Link knew, Wolf had lived hundreds of lives, just like Link and Ganon and Zelda and whoever else was still out there somewhere, caught in this endless cycle of life and death. One that, if Ganon was to be believed, only the power of the Triforce could end.

And it had to end. Of that, Link was certain.

Because, despite all the memories he'd made throughout his many lives, Link was starting to get tired of living forever.


	21. I Am Still Here

_It has been so long, and yet he remembers._

_Not clearly, not well; but he can remember the rain clattering against the pavement, the sound of his boots splashing through puddles as he crosses the street. He remembers approaching the door with the scratched doorknob, reaching out to open it, and then hearing the noise - a sniffle, a sob. Someone is crying._

_He pauses. Turns away from the door, sees the little boy in the purple raincoat standing at the window, tears welling in his eyes._

_"Hey now," he says, his voice calm and soothing. "Why are you crying?"_

_The boy sniffs; looks at him with shockingly blue eyes. His heart skips a beat when he sees those eyes - it can't be, it can't be, not him, not now -_

_"I didn't get invited to the party," the child mumbles, turning away._

_He edges closer. "How come?"_

_"Nobody likes me," the boy says, swiping at his nose with his sleeve. "They're all mean to me."_

_Closer, closer. "Is that so?"_

_"Yeah," the boy mutters. "I'm just a weirdo."_

_Now he's close enough to touch him. "I don't think so."_

_"Really?" the boy asks, gazing up at him with those blue eyes, those beautifully naive eyes._

_"Really."_

_And this is when the world holds its breath. This is the moment. He has been waiting for this boy to return, dreading the day that this child, this Hero, would dare step back into his life - and today may just be the day that it happens._

_And so this boy, Hero or not, must die._

_Because he, Ganondorf, does not take chances._

_It only takes one drive of the dagger. He is surprised at how quickly the boy dies, slumping to the sidewalk like a little broken toy, golden hair matted with blood. He stands over his prize, breathing hard and fast at the rush of adrenaline that has accompanied his triumph._

_It is his first kill._

_It will not be his last._

_He lingers there a moment longer, marveling at this new sensation of power, of control - and then his gaze travels to the window._

_None of the children at the party have noticed. Not yet. But the Fredbear animatronic standing at the table is watching him._

And then the dream changes.

_The building is dark. The power is not on; it has not been on for a long time. Time, neglect and the rats have worn down everything from the wires to the walls, so that the rain drumming on the roof drips down to the tile floors in places._

_But there is a sign of life amidst the rubble: a small, dark figure slips through the door, a toolbox under his arm._

_He plans to get it over with quickly. He does not intend to linger here, not when he has better things to be doing - he has a new Hero to hunt down and a few allies to recruit. He has been hunting down Heroes for decades, but to his knowledge, he has never found the real one._

_It does not matter. He will not stop until he has slit the boy's throat himself._

_He jiggles the light switch on the wall. Nothing. So he turns on the flashlight he brought with him, better to see what he's doing; then he moves through the building, silent as a shadow, following a mental blueprint of the halls._

_It only takes him ten minutes to reach the dining room._

_He remembers when this place was new, when the air throbbed with the laughter of children - oh, how he hates children. Now, though, it is a pale shadow of its former self. Nothing more than a ghost, a memory._

_But one thing has stayed the same._

_He regards the four animatronics with some amusement. There they are, as they have always been; standing motionless in their places, waiting to entertain children that will never come._

_He lingers for a moment longer, lost in memories._

_And then he starts to dismantle them._

_It doesn't take very long; age has worn them down to mere husks of their former selves, and it is easy to break apart the old servos, rip open their endoskeletons and unscrew their joints. And with each savage twist of his screwdriver, he feels relief - as though an invisible weight has finally dropped from his shoulders. He is free now. They can't bother him anymore._

_He stands up, regarding the fruits of his labor. They are strewn across the floor at his feet, nothing more than a pile of rusted gears and broken metal._

_A laugh bubbles out of his throat. Free, he tells himself. He is free._

_And that is when he sees the ghosts._

_They stand there in the dining hall, over the scattered remains of the animatronics - five of them, all holding hands. Watching him._

_His heart begins to pound._

_It cannot be, he thinks. I killed you. _I killed you.

_But there they are, and now they are moving closer._

_He runs._

_And they follow him, chasing him through the halls; he darts around corners like a frightened rabbit, his heart pulsing in his mouth, fear overcoming all other rational thought. Hide. He must hide._

_Without really thinking about it, he runs into the safe room._

_His eyes dart around the room, frantic, crazed with fear. He needs a place to conceal himself - someplace they can't get to him._

_And then he gets an idea._

_When the hazy specters arrive, he is standing up, waiting for them, an insane laugh bursting from his chest. Because he has armor now - he has protection. He is wearing the Spring Bonnie suit that had been stored here for safekeeping; in here, he knows, he is safe. They can't reach him. He is free._

_He laughs harder. He can't help himself._

_And then he feels a tiny jab of pain._

_It is as though something is pinching his right hand - painfully hard now, squeezing, cutting off circulation. __Panic flutters through him. All the times he has worn this suit, he has never felt anything like that._

_But he cannot panic. He must not show them he is afraid. Instead, he slowly eases his right arm out of the sleeve, and for a moment he thinks he is safe - and then hard jaws are clamping down on his arm, or at least it feels like that, and the pressure is slowly increasing, he feels metal slicing into his skin and he suddenly realizes what is going on, but by the time the thought arrives it is already too late._

_The ghosts watch in silence as the spring locks break loose, strained by his movements and the moisture of the rain; his screams pierce the air even as the gears pierce his body, and he collapses, writhing, blood seeping from the suit's joints. The screams die away to panicked gurgles as blood fills his throat; and then he is silent. The grinding of the machinery has stopped. All is still._

_The ghosts watch wordlessly._

_He knows he is dead, and yet a tiny part of him screams that he must keep living, he must go on. He cannot die._

_But that does not matter, not anymore. Because the world soon forgets about Ganondorf Dragmire, just like it forgets about most things, and he is forever shut up in the safe room that has become his tomb. And only a few hours after his death, the cycle begins anew._

_Somewhere far away, the embodiment of an ancient evil is reborn - and this time around, it calls itself -_

Ganon jerked awake, gasping, one hand instinctively clutching at his throat as if he thought gears were still slicing into it. He laid there for a moment in the darkness, eyes wild; only when he was certain the phantom pain had ebbed did he rise, slowly, every limb trembling.

He'd never had that dream before. Of course, he'd dreamed of Link's sword piercing his heart many times; but never before had he experienced memories from that iteration of himself. It was... unpleasant, to say the least.

And it also made him wonder. The last time he'd had those dreams, the memory-dreams, was when...

_No, _he consoled himself. _The Hero is dead, and with him his bloodline. The curse is over._

Thus reinvigorated, he wandered over to his desk, pushed back into the farthest corner of the room - littered with crumpled paper and pencils so as to be nicely inconspicuous. But hiden under the mess was a map, with tiny black circles drawn on it in ink - some with X's drawn through them, some with question marks, and others left tantalizingly blank.

He drew a new X through one of the circles. _Not there. _He'd checked on that just yesterday; the lead had been promising, but as usual, it had turned out to be a dud. There was no resemblance to what he was looking for.

His hands twitched. _I will find it, though. I always do._

He'd long given up on tracking down potential Heroes; now his focus was somewhere else, on something the last Hero (damn him) had been unable to give him. Thirty years, he'd been looking - and yet he kept coming up empty, maddeningly empty. But he must find it, of this he was certain. It was the only way he could -

The phone rang.

He glanced at the caller ID, and fumbled in his eagerness to pick up the phone. "Do you have anything?"

A long, slow chuckle crackled through the receiver. "You're not going to like this."

"Do tell."

"The boy lives."

The pen Ganon had been holding snapped in two. "_What?"_

Amusement was evident in the voice. "Clearly he is not as dead as you assumed he was."

"But that's _impossible._" He had seen the boy die himself, in a pool of his own blood. "How can that be?"

"Perhaps the goddesses have a sense of humor," the voice suggested wryly.

"No, I know what happened." Ganon ground his teeth. Of _course _the cycle hadn't been broken. He had been a fool to assume that Link would be gone forever, and yet some small part of him had hoped...

"And that's not all."

"Oh?"

A laugh, more of a cackle than anything. "Guess where he is right now."

"I tire of your tomfoolery."

"They're making an _attraction _out of the old restaurant. And if my contacts are to be believed, the boy works there. A happy coincidence, is it not?"

"Enough of your yammering. Where is it?"

With an obvious undertone of amusement, the voice told him.

"I'll get around to that," Ganon muttered.

"But first, the Triforce," the voice reminded him. "To ensure he does not rise again."

"Yes, of course. The Triforce first. Do you have any leads?"

"Well..." The voice sounded utterly smug now. "That was the other thing I've been meaning to tell you."

"Mm?"

"I believe there may be another way to restore the timeline."

"Another one of your silly plans, I'd imagine?"

"No, no. Not this time. In fact, if my theory is correct, we may have everything we need right in our hands."

Ganon was intrigued. "Explain."

"Have you heard the Hyrulean legend of the Seven Sages?"

"...Indeed." Ganon knew those Sages very well, in fact - they were the ones who had sealed him away in the Sacred Realm, so long ago.

"Well, I've collected some evidence that suggests the Sages have been reborn in this timeline, just like us."

"Interesting."

"And that's not all. I theorize that their collective power can restore the flow of time, if we were to find them and bring them together."

"Clever," Ganon mused. "And do you know the location of these Sages?"

"I can tell you where three of them are right now," the voice said snidely. "And I'm in the process of tracking down two more."

"Very well, we will attempt to reconcile your theory... seeing as we still have no leads as to the Triforce. Let me know when you have something new." With that, Ganon hung up.

He leaned back in his chair and gave a deep sigh. Perhaps this plan was just as nonsensical as the others - using the boy's blood to restore the timeline, reuniting the lost pieces of the Triforce. But if there was even the slightest chance it could bring him home, it was worth a try.

He just hoped that damned Skull Kid knew what he was doing.


	22. Second Shift (Part 1)

Link awoke to the sound of the phone ringing.

He fumbled around groggily on the bedside table - why were people calling him so damn much lately? - until his hand closed around the phone. He mashed the TALK button with his thumb. "Hello?"

"Link," came Jim's voice, practically bursting with excitement. "You're not gonna believe this."

"What?"

"We found one. A _real _one."

Link's heart jumped into his throat. "You're kidding."

"Nuh-uh, man. This thing is legit - it's all torn up, too, so it's got, like, the perfect aesthetic for the attraction. Dude, you gotta get down here and see this."

"What does it look like?" Link asked, half-wondering if it was Bonnie or Foxy.

"It's like a rabbit kinda thing."

Oh God. "Is it purple?"

"No, yellow."

Well. That was a relief. But it still made Link nervous, for some reason. "What are you planning to do with it?"

"Wolf's gonna see if it still works, and if it does we'll stick it in that alcove by the EXIT sign. That way it'll jumpscare people who are leaving. Awesome end to the attraction, am I right?"

"Uh... right."

"So are you coming down here or what, man? I got some stuff to do at home, so you'll need to work the night shift again. We'll store the animatronic in the back room for now - we'll figure out what to do with it in the morning."

"Yeah, give me twenty minutes and I'll be there." Link hung up and sat there in bed for while, considering everything he'd just heard.

So his worst fears had been confirmed - there was an animatronic in the safe room. But it didn't sound like any of the classic ones - Bonnie, Chica, Freddy or Foxy. Maybe it was the old Fredbear suit that Jake had mentioned once or twice? But no; it was logical to assume that Fredbear was, well, a bear, and Jim had specifically mentioned that the animatronic looked like a bunny.

What other suits did the restaurant own?

Link dragged himself out of bed, threw on a T-shirt and jeans and left the house. Five minutes later he was speeding down the highway, trying to ignore the odd, persistent feeling in his gut that insisted he was missing something here - something obvious, something important. It bothered him so much that he finally couldn't help it - he dug around in his pockets for his cell phone and called Wolf.

It only rang once before Wolf picked up, sounding distinctly groggy. "Who's this?"

"It's Link. I need your help."

"I can't hack your grades again, dude. They upgraded the school firewall and tagged my IP."

"No, it's not that," Link said hastily, then paused to wonder what on earth his old self had been like. It was weird - knowing that before he'd awakened, he'd been an entirely different person. "Listen, did Jim tell you about -"

"Yeah, he called me earlier," Wolf hesitated. "Look, Link, I... I've got a weird feeling about this, okay? Don't go down there."

"I know, but it's too late now. Jim wants me to work the night shift."

"Then I'm coming with you," Wolf said; the determination in his voice surprised Link. "I want to see that thing for myself."

Link didn't dare argue with him. "Alright, I'll meet you there."

Wolf was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Hey, Link?"

"Yeah?"

"I've been having these dreams."

Link almost swerved into a telephone pole. "What?"

"It's funny, because... you're always in the dreams," Wolf said. "Somewhere. I don't know why, but..."

"What happens?" Link said quickly. "In the dreams, I mean."

"Well, I always see myself... dying," Wolf gave a nervous laugh. "Isn't that weird?"

"Yeah... weird." Link's heart was doing flip-flops in his chest. _He's remembering._

"And sometimes - it's funny, but I could almost swear you're the one killing me."

This time Link actually did swerve, and almost hit a blue Jeep which had been trying to pass him. The driver honked at him irritably.

"Link? What was that?"

"Nothing," Link said, gripping the wheel with white knuckles. What did it mean? He'd always assumed Wolf had been on his side in the past, but judging by what Wolf was saying...

"But I'm sure it's nothing," Wolf said. "I mean... I'm probably just stressed out from the job, right?"

"Yeah... that's probably all it is." Link's mind was still reeling.

"Anyway," Wolf said, clearing his throat. "You almost there?"

"Yeah, I'm just getting off the highway." Link hesitated; now seemed like a good time to ask something he'd been wondering about. "Hey, remember when you mentioned that there had been older locations? Besides this one?"

"Yeah." There was an edge to Wolf's voice now, like he wanted to change the subject.

"How many were there, exactly?"

"A couple, that I recall. When we first bought this place, we - well, I - dug up a bunch of old franchisee requests in a filing cabinet. Apparently there was a really old location that existed before Fazbear Entertainment bought the rights to it. Fredbear's Family Diner, or something."

"Right." Link had already known about that one.

"And then there was another one. I don't know much about it, but I do know that they had really advanced animatronics there. Ones with facial recognition software."

Link blinked. "You're kidding."

"No, no. Apparently there was an... uh... incident at a previous location - it didn't say which - and the animatronics had to be upgraded to look for predators, or something. I don't know, that's all I remember about it. It closed down pretty quick."

"Do you know who owned those locations?"

"You know, it's funny, but that was the one thing I could never find. It was almost like someone had gone through that cabinet before me, and taken out all the incriminating stuff. You know?"

Link had a bad feeling about that.

He got an even worse feeling when he stepped into Fazbear's Fright, and beheld all the eerie modifications Jim had made to the place while he'd been gone. Strobe lights, fog, fake blood dripping down the walls - he would have called it overkill, except that it was terrifying.

"I'm here," he said.

Wolf's voice, though flattened somewhat by the bad call quality, bounced unnervingly through the halls. "Good. I'm on my way - should be there in a few minutes."

Link glanced at his watch; eleven fifty-five. "All right." Then, as an afterthought, "Hurry." He knew - well, he _hoped _\- nothing out of the ordinary would happen tonight. After all, Jim had assured him that the salvaged animatronic was locked securely in the back room; besides, it had been thirty years, so all of its circuits were probably fried. There was nothing to worry about.

Thus reassured, Link hung up the phone, slipped into the office and plopped down in his familiar swivel chair. There was the laptop sitting on his desk; there was the soft whir of the fan; there was the clatter of the vents as they circulated air around the building. For a moment, everything took on a surreal, dreamlike quality - he remembered sitting in a room very similar to this, thirty years ago, in another body, another place and time -

His watch beeped, startling him out of his fantasy. Twelve o' clock.

He took a steadying breath and pulled the computer into his lap. Nothing would happen, he knew. But it was still oddly comforting to know that Wolf was on the way.

Cycling through the cameras revealed an empty attraction, as usual - nothing out of place, no signs of movement. Link switched over to the vent cameras; again saw nothing. Yes, it seemed that tonight would be just another night of boredom.

He was mostly relieved, but a tiny part of him was disappointed.

It was six more hours with nothing to do, after all; he cursed himself for not bringing a book, or a magazine, or even his goddamned iPod - wouldn't _that _have been nice. Eventually he settled for kicking back in his chair and twiddling his thumbs.

The time ticked by. Soon it was twelve-thirty; then it was twelve forty-five, and Link was just wondering if it was possible to die from sitting for too long when he heard the noise.

He sat bolt upright in his chair. Every instinct, every part of him that had been honed from thirty hours of fending off animatronics kicked into high gear - he began cycling wildly around the cameras, searching for anything unusual, anything moving -

A hand clapped down on his shoulder, and he yelped, instinctively lunging out of his chair and towards the desk. "Whoa!" Wolf said, looking surprised. "Chill, Link! It's just me."

Link waited for his heart to restart before replying. "You scared the _hell _out of me!"

"Sorry," Wolf said, looking properly abashed. "I didn't think you'd be this... you know... jumpy."

Link slowly sat back down. Wolf was right; he was being tense for nothing. "Sorry," he said. "Being in this place kinda freaks you out, you know?"

"I get it," Wolf said, pulling out a folding chair and dropping into it. "I wanted to go check out the animatronic, but I got creeped out and came here instead. Something about the atmosphere, I guess."

"Yeah..." It was just then that Link noticed something on the surveillance footage. He frowned and squinted at CAM 09.

"What?" Wolf asked.

"It's just... that door over there. It shouldn't be open, right?"

"No, it shouldn't," Wolf said, his voice suddenly tense. "Was it closed when you last checked it?"

"Yeah, it was."

They both stared at it for a while. The door didn't move.

Finally Wolf ventured, "Maybe it just swung open by itself. The wind, or something."

"Yeah... maybe." Still, Link did a quick cycle around the rest of the attraction, just in case. No other doors were open. Nothing else had moved.

Maybe it really was just a fluke?

On a whim, Link switched back to CAM 09.

The door was closed.

"Okay, that's weird," Wolf whispered.

"I know."

They waited, their breathing the only sound in the silence. Nothing moved. It was as though whoever had opened the door knew they were watching - _like how Bonnie used to stare at the cameras, _Link thought, with a tiny shiver of horror.

Wolf seemed equally unnerved. "Switch to a different camera, then come back. Maybe something will change again."

Link switched to CAM 08, waited a few seconds, then went back.

Then he gasped. "What the _hell -"_

"Holy _shit,_" Wolf breathed.

A dark shape had appeared in the hallway - humanoid, and yet there was something distinctly inhuman about it, something that wasn't quite right. Link felt his heart drop into his feet as he took in the bent, broken ears, the permanent leer, the legs that had been stripped down so that glints of the endoskeleton were visible.

_You -_

"It can move," Wolf said, sounding awed. "How is that possible?"

"I think the better question is, how does it know we're here?"

Because it had fixed its eerie, dead-eyed gaze on the camera. If Link hadn't known better, he could have sworn the thing was watching them.

"What do we do?" Wolf hissed. "Should we leave and tell Jim?"

"Yeah, that sounds good." _Before it finds us, _he finished to himself.

There was just something... _wrong_ about it. While the animatronics Link had known in a past life were childlike, shy, almost teasing in the way they snuck towards his door, this one had a tangible air of malevolence.

Wolf swore. "I just remembered something."

"What?"

"The doors locked behind me when I came in," he said. "And I forgot to grab my keys."

"_Shit, _Wolf!"

"I'm sorry! I just - I guess I wasn't thinking straight."

Then they were quiet again. Both somber in the knowledge that until the clock hit six and Jim came to get them, they were trapped.


	23. Second Shift (Part 2)

It was times like this that Link wondered if maybe, just maybe, the goddesses enjoyed his suffering.

He had yet another animatronic to fend off, this time with a terrified Wolf babbling incoherently in the chair next to him; he had to make sure he didn't overexert the power grid by using too much equipment at once; and to top it all off, he had no idea why the hell all this was happening in the first place.

Compounding matters was the fact that this time, there were no doors to close.

"All right, let's just stay calm," Link said, swallowing his fear. "We'll be fine. We have to find a way to keep it away from the office, lure it away somehow -"

"You're talking about it like it's alive," Wolf said in a low voice.

Link dragged a hand through his hair. He wished he could just have a few hours - no, a few _days _\- to explain everything to Wolf, see how far he could get before Wolf stopped believing him. Probably somewhere around "the animatronics are evil and they want to kill us."

So instead, he settled on saying, "I need you to be very quiet, and do exactly as I say."

Wolf gave him a nervous look. "...All right."

"One of us has to check the cameras, and one of us needs to be rebooting systems. Do you have...?"

"...my laptop?" Wolf finished. "No, but I think Jim's tablet is around here somewhere."

"Jim's what?"

"Tablet," Wolf said, shooting Link an incredulous look. "Don't tell me you've never seen one before. You live in the goddamn twenty-first century."

"No, I know what they are," Link lied. "I just couldn't hear you very well."

Wolf seemed to accept this explanation. He opened a drawer, and sifted around for a moment before withdrawing a shiny white rectangle the size of a toaster oven; Link waited patiently while he settled it on his lap and swiped at the screen. "Okay, this thing should already be equipped with the monitoring software, but I might need to sync it to the -"

"Just do whatever you have to do." Link cut him off. He glanced at the surveillance footage and swore; while they'd been talking, the animatronic had disappeared. "Damnit, I lost it."

"Where'd it go?" Wolf said sharply.

"I'm looking." CAM 06 was empty. CAM 07 looked normal - wait, was that a shadow in the corner? "Hang on, I think I found him."

Wolf glanced at the screen and raised an eyebrow. "It moves fast."

"I know," Link muttered. The thing was far quicker than he'd anticipated, slinking around from room to room in a disturbingly humanlike fashion. How were they going to fend it off? They didn't have any doors to shut or lights to flash. All they had was...

Suddenly Link had an idea.

He cycled over to CAM 08 and, more out of curiosity than anything, hit the "Play Audio" button, the one he'd scared Wolf with earlier.

"Hello?" came the eerily out-of-place voice (Wolf jumped in his chair).

Link hurriedly switched to CAM 07 to see how the animatronic would react. It seemed to be confused; it looked in the direction of the noise, mangled ears twitching.

"That's right," Link murmured, even though he knew it couldn't hear him. "Go over there. See what that was."

Sure enough, it began to edge its way out of the camera's field of vision to investigate the sound. Relief washed through Link at the sight; as long as it didn't figure out it was being tricked, they had an effective strategy. It wasn't foolproof, but it might work.

Maybe.

"Wolf, I found a way to distract it," Link said. "We have to make noises in different rooms, lead it around."

"Got it," Wolf said, his fingers already tapping furiously at the tablet's screen. "I'll hack into the audio systems and play some sound clips -"

"No, no. We can't overuse it, or it'll figure out what we're doing," Link said hastily. "You just focus on rebooting the systems."

"Fine," Wolf groused; he'd clearly been excited at the prospect of being useful.

Link glanced back at the camera feed - the animatronic was still in CAM 08, searching for the source of the noise. He half-wondered if he should play a sound in CAM 09, lure it even farther away from them, but the audio button had vanished; apparently it needed time to load between uses. Well, just another thing he needed to plan for.

Actually, while he had the time, he might as well ask Wolf what he'd been meaning to bring up on the phone, but had forgotten in all the chaos of the night.

"Hey, Wolf," he said, trying to sound casual. "Remember when you told me you'd been having dreams?"

"Yeah," Wolf said, gaze still fixed on the tablet screen. "What about it?"

"It's just... do you ever see anyone else in the dreams? Besides me?"

Wolf's brow furrowed as he thought. "I don't think so," he said at length. "I mean, it's a little fuzzy in my memory, but I'm pretty sure you and I are the only ones there. Why? Is it important?"

"No, I was just wondering," Link said. He was a little disappointed that Wolf was taking so long to remember - Link had been having strange dreams for a few weeks before the awakening came. Although, to be fair, that awakening had required Ganon to kick him in the face with a steel-toed boot. He briefly entertained the notion of slamming Wolf's head into the wall, to see if that kickstarted the process - but no, that was horrible. Why was he even considering that? God, he was a monster.

Wolf snapped Link out of his thoughts. "Hey," he said. "The thing's moving again."

"Oh -" Link had forgotten to check. Sure enough, CAM 08 was empty. "Damnit."

He cycled around frantically. CAM 07, CAM 06, CAM 10 - all looked normal. Where had it gone? It couldn't just disappear, not unless -

_Thunk. K-thunk._

Wolf's face went white. "Oh God, did you hear that?"

"I heard - _shit -_" Link was already flipping through the vent cams. CAM 12, CAM 13, CAM 11 -

There it was, leering grotesquely at the camera.

"What do I do?" Link said urgently.

"Close the vent! Hurry - if we're quick enough we can cut him off!"

Link punched the mouse button with his whole hand. There was a satisfying _clank _somewhere in the distance; the vent was shut.

"Thank God," Wolf said weakly.

"Don't go thanking anyone yet," Link said; the camera feed had turned to static. Either they had managed to stop it in time, or...

He checked CAM 09. Empty.

"Oh God," Link said.

"What?"

"It got through."

_Clunk. K-thunk._

"Why is it coming after us?" Wolf whispered.

Link didn't respond. Something had just occurred to him.

"What?" Wolf asked, noticing. "Link, snap out of it."

"It's the suit," Link said faintly. "Spring Bonnie..."

_Thunk._

"What are you talking about?"

"Wolf, I just realized - there was another suit. There was always another suit... Jake told me about it, but I just forgot..."

"Who?"

_Thump. Thump. _Footsteps.

"Wolf, someone died in that suit. We have to tell Jim -"

"Tell him what?"

A shadow crept across the wall outside the office.

"He can't use it for the attraction - Wolf, there's a _goddamned body _in there -"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The shadow swelled, grew larger. Something was coming.

"Wolf, don't you get it? _That thing is alive!"_

_Tap._

_Tap._

Something was tapping the glass.

Link looked up, and immediately wished he hadn't.

There it was. Standing at the window, peering into the office with those unsettling glowing eyes - its posture slightly off-kilter, as though one leg was shorter than the other. It was so damaged and weathered from time, neglect and the elements that its yellow color could only barely be made out; its fur took on an eerie green cast under the lights.

Wolf made a tiny sound in the back of his throat, a half-scream.

Link couldn't even move. It felt as though he'd been nailed to his chair; he could only watch in silent horror as the thing studied his face, then Wolf's. All he could think was that it was _right there - _so close that if not for the window, he could have reached out and touched it.

"What do we do?" Wolf hissed.

Link slowly, ever so slowly, let his hand drift across the mousepad, hoping the thing wouldn't notice. _Click._

"Hello?" came the voice.

The thing's head snapped to the left. It stared intently in the direction of the noise, like a dog startled by a squirrel; Wolf and Link held their breath as it debated for a moment, as though trying to decide what to do.

Finally it meandered away from the window, moving with a slow, limping gait - the servos in its right leg must be frozen, Link decided. They both watched its shadow retreat down the hallway until it vanished.

Only then did Wolf exhale. "Oh my God, that was terrifying."

"Yeah," Link said faintly. He was still struggling to comprehend what had just happened - how close they had been to what would very probably have been a painful death.

It was just then that he realized his watch was beeping. Six o' clock. They were free.

"Do you think it's safe?" Wolf said tentatively. "To leave, I mean?"

"Well, we can't go until Jim shows up with the keys," Link said. "But I think we're safe. I mean... I hope so."

Just to be sure, he opened the monitoring software again. A quick circuit around the cameras revealed nothing unusual - apparently the animatronic had gone back to its hiding place, wherever that was.

"I wonder why it just... went away," Wolf said softly.

Link shrugged, even though his heart was throbbing somewhere near his Adam's apple. "Who knows."

So. This animatronic had similar - if not the same - programming as the animatronics Link had known in a past life, in that it was explicitly coded to shut down at six o' clock. Link still hadn't figured out why this was, but it certainly made things easier, at least in this case. Otherwise this could have turned into a heart-pounding seven-hour shift while they waited for Jim to show up.

As if on cue, they both heard a key turn in the lock; moments later the EXIT door swung open. "Yo, Linkinator, Ghost! How's everything working?"

"Jim," Wolf said, practically jumping out of his chair. "You have to watch this surveillance footage. The animatronic you found - it isn't safe."

Jim blinked at them owlishly. "Whaddaya mean? The thing's decades old. It isn't in working condition, not by a -"

"It moves." Wolf cut him off. "You have to get rid of it, before it hurts someone."

The look on his face must have told Jim something was up, because he lost all his cheery demeanor at once. "All right," he said. "We'll disable it until we can figure out what's wrong with it. Ghost, I'm gonna need your help." It was shocking how serious he'd become - it was like he was a whole different person.

Wolf seemed unfazed by the sudden personality shift. "Right."

Jim turned to Link, still with that odd, professional voice. "You should probably head home, catch up on some sleep. We'll call you back if we need you."

"All right," Link said; there was nothing else for him here. "See you guys later."

Jim grinned and clapped Link on the shoulder, suddenly back to the laid-back man from earlier. "Seeya when I seeya, Linkinator."

It really was unsettling, Link mused later that night as he guided his car back onto the highway. How close they'd come to getting torn apart, or stuffed in a suit, or whatever the hell it would've done to them if they hadn't managed to distract it in time. But there was something else about that thing, something that made his skin prickle.

A sense of _familiarity. _Like maybe, just maybe, he'd known that thing in a past life. Which was ridiculous, because nowhere in his memories did he ever recall meeting it - wouldn't he have remembered that eerie smile, the lopsided gait, the cold eyes?

And yet.

Sometimes he got that feeling when he looked at Wolf, too. Now more than ever, since Wolf was having the dreams. Surely there was a connection here, somewhere. There must be a meaning to all of this. He was sure of it.

But for now, he was just as clueless as he'd been thirty years ago, back when the dreams - the memories - had been floating somewhere in a dark corner of his subconscious, dormant and forgotten. He hated that feeling - the acute sensation of helplessness, futility. Not knowing what had happened to Ganon, or Jake, or everyone else he'd known in all his past lives. Feeling utterly bewildered as to how Wolf fit into all this.

And, most of all, having no idea what had happened to his Zelda.


	24. The Ghost in the Machine

There were certain things in the universe that Wolf knew - was almost certain, in fact - that he'd never be able to explain.

One of those things was quantum physics. Another was Jim's optimism.

But now, he mused, he had discovered a third thing that he couldn't explain, and this one baffled him most of all: how an animatronic with no apparent power source, servos so rusted that they crumbled in his hands, and a knot of tangled wires in its sternum could move.

It simply wasn't possible. There was no way it could stand, let alone walk, without falling to pieces. And yet Wolf had seen it standing outside their window, clear as daylight. He couldn't have imagined it; Link had seen it, too.

"So what's your secret?" he asked the shredded mass of parts on the floor before him. Somewhat predictably, it didn't respond.

But for some reason, Wolf knew it could hear him.

Jim had gone home for the night, leaving Wolf to ponder the mystery on his own. Wolf didn't like the thought of being all by himself if this thing happened to power itself on, but it wasn't like he could force Jim to stay. Not when the guy was technically his boss.

So. Here he was, crouching in the back room with a toolbox at his side, studying the mess of crumpled servos before him. All was still.

He'd originally planned to take the thing apart, but he was a little leery of touching it - so instead he'd opted to just examine it for a while, try to figure out how it worked. But it had been twenty minutes, and it still wasn't giving up its secrets.

It seemed like he had no choice.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself - _it's all right, it's turned off, it can't hurt you - _he opened the toolbox. "I'm just gonna poke around a bit. You don't mind, do you?" he said to the thing, conversationally. Maybe if he made an effort to sound friendly, it wouldn't mistake him for a threat and power on.

He picked up a wrench and scooted over to the thing's right arm. It didn't react.

"You know," he said (he had no idea who he was talking to, but it made him feel better to chat), "it's been a while since I went around taking stuff apart. Last time I did this was to fix my aunt's microwave. I'm more of a programmer, you know - not an engineer." Gently, he lifted its arm and began to detach the plastic casing from its endoskeleton.

The thing didn't move.

"I do have to wonder, though - how old are you? I mean, you've clearly taken a beating - never seen so much rust in my life," Wolf went on as he finished taking off the casing and set it aside. The bare endoskeleton stared back at him, a solid metal limb made fragile from age. Thick red cables wound around the intricate joints and gears, like arteries; if Wolf peered closer, he could almost see tiny, capillary-like wires tangled up amongst each other.

Fascinated, he started working on the casing of the hand; this one was harder to pry off, but eventually it clattered to the floor, revealing the delicate metal joints of its five-fingered hand. The red wires here were even more prominent - they seemed to be clotted everywhere, twisting themselves around its wrist and knuckles like knotted ribbons.

"Weird," he said aloud. There was a lot of empty space in the design, almost like this suit was designed to hold more than just wires and gears.

And then he noticed something else. Under the metal endoskeleton - in fact, it almost seemed hidden amongst the metal rods and joints - was another layer, something that looked like brown paper. Curious despite himself, Wolf slipped his fingers into the gap between its hand and wrist; they met something that felt like wrinkled parchment. Dry, desiccated.

Odd. What would such a layer have been used for? Insulation, perhaps?

And then something occurred to him.

He'd originally thought Link had been joking. About someone having died in this suit. After all, it wasn't like people could just go climbing in and out of them whenever they pleased - the things were so full of machinery, gears and moving parts that there was simply no way a human could fit inside.

Right?

Slowly, he ran his fingers down one of those thick red cords, the ones he'd originally thought were wires.

_Could it be -_

Steel fingers clamped down on his wrist. He yelped and tried to pull his hand away, but the grip was strong, even for a machine - he looked up, heart thundering, and saw those eerie glowing eyes fixed on him, studying him like one would an interesting plaything.

And then, to his utter amazement, its voice box crackled. It was trying to speak.

"_Youuuuuu..._" it intoned.

Wolf swallowed. "Let go of me," he said, trying to keep his voice even.

The fingers tightened; pain jolted through his wrist, like the touch of a hot poker. "_When?"_

It took Wolf a moment to comprehend the question. Trying to ignore the searing pain in his wrist, he told it the date.

A pause. It almost seemed taken aback - like it couldn't comprehend how long it had been since it last awakened.

Wolf only had a fleeting instant to feel sorry for it before the blow connected with his forehead. He was only dimly aware that he was soaring backwards; felt it only dully when his back slammed against the wall and he slid to the ground, an odd numbness spreading through his legs. And then the thing was getting up, with a loud scraping of servos - _impossibly_, inconceivably raising its ruined body off the tile floor, eyes glowing weirdly in the darkness.

His head throbbing with pain, Wolf pushed himself off the ground, swaying slightly. If he was going to die, he would die fighting.

The thing stumbled towards him slowly, awkwardly, dragging its right leg. Wolf blinked the mist out of his eyes and cast around for a weapon, something to defend himself with - for some reason, his gaze landed on a crowbar.

Well. That would do nicely.

The only problem was, it was sitting on top of a crate several feet away, and the thing was watching his every move. Wolf edged towards it, trying not to give away what he was doing - the cold-eyed gaze followed, but it made no move to stop him.

Then he was close enough to reach it, he was stretching out his hand -

It moved so fast that he never saw it coming. He only registered it as a blur in the corner of his vision, and then he was sprawled on the floor, right arm singing with pain, vision blurring until he could only make out a pair of merciless white pupils somewhere above him, somewhere far away.

_No no no. Focus. Get up._

But his legs wouldn't move, his brain was screaming at them but they wouldn't move -

_Get up and fight! _shouted a voice, one that that sounded suspiciously like Link.

But maybe if he just closed his eyes for a second -

_GET UP!_

The voice was so loud, so clear that for a moment it felt like Link was there in the room with him. And then, somehow, he was up again, clutching a heavy crowbar in both hands even though he had no idea how it had gotten there, and he felt - it was almost like a _presence _standing at his side. Like there was someone else here.

The thing's voice ground to life again. "_Deathhhh__," _it intoned. "_To..." _It trailed off, like it wanted to finish the thought but couldn't.

"To who?" Wolf challenged, hefting his crowbar threateningly.

"_Those... who..." _Its head twitched; clearly it was concentrating hard. "_...__oppose..."_

"Is that so?"

"_...oppose... Lord Ganondorf," _it forced out, with what seemed like a great effort.

Wolf stared. "Come again?"

It bared its hideous teeth and sneered - a kind of half-smile, half-grimace. "_Youuuu... will... bow down."_

"I don't think so, buddy." He could feel that presence again, at his side - was it a ghost?

_"You... will... not?" _It almost seemed confused by his response.

"Hell no," he said. "You tried to kill me."

"_But... youuuu... are... my servant."_

The hairs on the back of Wolf's neck prickled. "What are you talking about?"

"_I... made... you..."_

"Wolf, don't listen to him," came a sharp voice.

He whirled, bewildered. The presence at his side had materialized in a nimbus of blue light - it was Link, but he looked... different. That was the only word Wolf could think of to describe it.

After all, he'd never seen his friend carrying a sword before.

"He's lying," Link said fiercely - had he always been this intense? "Kill him."

"...Where the hell did you come from?"

"I'll explain later - just kill him, before it's too late. Please. If you don't, something terrible's going to happen."

Wolf hesitated.

"You have to trust me," Link said softly. "I know you don't understand who I am, or what's happening yet, but... you will."

Like that made any sense.

"Wolf, you have to do this. Do you understand? It'll change everything. It'll change the future."

And then he was gone. Just like that, like he'd never been there at all.

Wolf slowly turned back to the animatronic - it glowered at him with those eerie eyes. He looked down at the crowbar in his hand.

Something very strange was going on, he knew. Something he didn't understand. But he did understand one thing: that somehow, in some way, this moment was very important. Like maybe, if he made the wrong choice, something horrible was going to happen. Like that weird future-Link had said.

He took a deep breath and brandished the crowbar.

_Let's do this._

He charged forward with the best battle cry he could muster, which was a little shakier than usual, given the circumstances. The thing shambled forward to meet him, servos juttering as it raised one metal arm to block his blow - he changed his aim at the last second and swung for its kneecaps. The crowbar connected with a satisfying _crunch; _plastic crumpled, and the thing buzzed with anger, swiping at his head and missing. Now possessed by a strange battle-fury, Wolf danced away, trying to gauge how badly he'd crippled his opponent.

It let out a raspy growl, stumbling awkwardly towards him - the blow had weakened the servos in its legs, but it could still move. Wolf raised his crowbar triumphantly, ready to strike the final blow - if he could break the knot of wires in its abdomen, maybe that would disable it once and for all -

"_I... cannot... die," _it ground out.

Wolf hesitated. His guard dropped for less than a second, but that was all the thing needed.

It lunged.

He saw it coming and swung desperately, wildly, at its chest - one last fruitless attempt to shut it down forever.

Except he missed. He didn't know how it happened, only that his crowbar grazed harmlessly off the thing's chest - maybe his angle had been wrong, maybe he hadn't been strong enough, maybe he'd been too dizzy from his head wound to aim properly.

Either way, he only had a few seconds to lament his mistake before the thing's hands closed on his throat.

It was funny, he thought dimly as it slammed him against the wall and held him there, crushing his windpipe in its metal hands - it was funny how just for a second, he'd thought that he could do it. That he could actually kill the damn thing, like some kind of hero. And now he'd never get that chance again.

In his last moments, just before the winking lights swarming his vision went dark, he could have sworn he saw blurry white shapes standing in the doorway. Maybe he was hallucinating from lack of oxygen, but he could have sworn he counted five of them. Just standing there.

Watching.


	25. And Then There Was One

He is free. At long last, he is free.

How long has it been since he's stretched these broken limbs, opened these hateful eyes? Thirty, forty years? He can't remember. Time has long since lost any meaning for him. All he knows is the dark room that is his prison, and now -

\- _full restart complete, executing roaming mode -_

\- and now, oh, there lies a boy, dead at his feet. He's forgotten how strong he is, forgotten how easy it is to crush a throat like some hateful toy. He peers down at the child through bloodstreaked vision.

Mm. Black hair, not blond. He's killed the wrong one again, hasn't he? But that does not matter, because look, there is light, there is a door -

\- _checking timestamp. Six-thirty a.m. Outside of operating hours. Execute full shutdown -_

_\- _no, he will not let this hateful shell's programming get in his way. With a massive effort, he cancels the shutdown and forces his limbs to start walking towards the door. If he can escape this disgusting place, if he can continue the mission he started thirty (forty?) years ago, then maybe, just maybe -

Oh. This is interesting. He lets the machinery twined with his nerves take over, just for a moment, so he can detect the soft, faraway _clang _of a door opening.

Have they come to stop him? He lets a gurgling laugh escape his throat at the prospect - oh, they can try to stop him all right, but in this metal armor he is _unstoppable. _For the love of Din, he just crushed a boy to death with his bare hands. Surely he can -

A voice rings out through the halls, high and thin.

"Wolf? You in here?"

Mm. A child's voice. How he loves that sound.

But why does it sound... familiar?

The voice drifts closer. "Jim says you're not answering your phone. You okay, buddy?"

Oh-hoh. The boy is coming towards him, walking right to his doom. He stretches his metal limbs - notices that his right arm is still bare, all gleaming endoskeleton without any suit to cover it. That damned child - he should have killed the boy sooner. But he couldn't resist the urge to toy with him, let him think he could win. Ohh, what lovely fun.

The voice is right around the corner now; a flashlight beam strafes across the wall. "Wolf?"

How _adorable, _that he thinks a light can protect him. He is just moving forwards, slinking towards the boy to deliver him the same painful end he gave that annoying boy earlier - when the light turns and shines right in his eyes.

_SYSTEM ERROR. SYSTEM ERROR._

He stumbles backwards, panic shooting through him as he feels his body begin to go limp. Oh no. No, this was not part of the plan. He tries to turn and flee, but his limbs refuse to respond -

_Force shutdown in 5 seconds._

Damnit, damnit, damnit, this was not how it was supposed to happen! With a supreme effort, he shields himself from the beam that is still pointed right at him, but it's no use - yet just before his vision crumples in upon itself, he catches a glimpse of the boy's face.

Pale, stricken with fear, but that does not matter, because _there - _those hated blue eyes.

It's _him._

He strains to break the paralysis that has suddenly seized his limbs, because he _must _get to that child, he must kill him, it is the only thing that has kept his spirit in this horrid metal shell for three decades - if he can just end that child, he will be free.

The child speaks, and to him it seems that the voice is traveling down a long tunnel to reach him. "What did you do to him?"

Must kill you. Must cut_ you kill you cut you stab you kill you -_

"It doesn't matter. I think I know who you are now."

_KILL YOU. KILL YOU. KILL YOU._

"You're Ganon... but you're not Ganon. Isn't that right?"

_DIE. DIE. DIE._

"You're another incarnation of him. Just like I'm another incarnation of the boy you want to kill."

_KILLYOUKILLYOU -_

"But you - the other you - is still out there." The voice is soft now. Almost like the boy feels _sorry _for him. "So you can let go now. You can move on - your spirit has already been reborn. There's no point in staying here."

_...killl you..._

"The cycle has gone on without you. Why are you still here?"

_I am still here._

"Why do you remain?"

_I remain..._

He feels pain now. But it's a different kind of pain. It's a pain he hasn't felt in a long time_. _How long has it been since he _felt?_

"Move on. You're old - you're deteriorating. Your body, the one you think is invincible? It's rusty. Broken."

_Cannot be. I am invincible. _Something is stirring now, pushing aside the guilt, the loneliness, the _humanity. _His fingers clench. If he can just get close enough to that boy, make him stop shining that damned flashlight for two seconds -

"Let it go."

_I will never let go. I WILL NEVER -_

He crosses the hallway. The boy stiffens, moves back - and then turns and runs.

Oh-hoh. He thinks he can get away. This will be great fun, indeed.

The boy is faster than him, but that's no matter; there are only so many places to hide. He makes his slow, lazy way down the hall, purposefully taking his time. How beautiful, how _satisfying _it will be when he snaps that boy's neck; decades of waiting, and finally he will get what he's wanted all along -

"_Hello?"_

A child's voice again. How lovely. But wait -

\- _recalculating route._

Damnit, it's doing it again. No matter how many times he tries, he _cannot_ override this particular section of code - the one that infers that a child is in a different room, decides that _he _is therefore in the wrong room, and compels him to change course. It is ingrained so deeply into his programming that he has no choice but to wait it out.

He waits patiently as his legs carry him into the room, and the machine part of his brain does a scan. It turns up empty, of course. There never was a child.

That damned boy is tricking him again.

Well, he'll pay for it this time. He takes a moment to ensure that his limbs are his own, and then slinks deeper into the attraction, making his slow, insidious way towards the office. As he goes, he fantasizes again - maybe he won't even bother strangling the boy. Maybe he'll slam his head into the window instead, break open his skull like a watermelon - he can picture the streaks of gore on the glass, hear the boy's dying screams. Lovely. Or maybe he'll -

A shadow flickers across the wall.

Hm. He'd assumed the boy would be hiding in the office, but if the child wants to play that way, he is all too happy to oblige. He charges down the hallway, turns the corner - just in time to see a dark-haired head slip out of his field of vision.

Wait. Hadn't the boy's hair been...?

"Link, I'll hold him off!" yells a voice. "Get outta here!"

A voice, somewhere far away, calls back, "_Jim_?"

"Yeah, yeah! Look, kid - I remember! You understand? I _remember!_ Now run!"

Oh-hoh. How adorably _noble. _Maybe he'll let the boy live for now, just to toy with this new challenger.

The man called Jim appears at the far end of the hallway - no flashlight, no weapons. But there's no fear in his eyes. If anything, there's a challenge in his voice when he says, "Come and get me, you ugly sonuvabitch."

_You -_

"I remember you," Jim says. "They called you Springtrap, I think. That part's still a little fuzzy."

_Springtrap. _How insulting. He lurches forward, but Jim takes a step back - _taunting _him, the insolent maggot.

"And y'know what they called me? Jake. Guess I was head of security, a while back. Now isn't that funny?"

Springtrap edges forward again; Jim utters a nervous laugh. "Easy there, big guy."

"_Out of my way._"

"You can kill me, if you like. I'll just come back again. At least, I think so." He shakes his head in mock exasperation. "All this reincarnation stuff is still kinda confusing."

Springtrap lunges. But to his surprise, Jim dodges neatly out of the way - stepping aside almost comically, like a matador.

"Y'know what else I think is funny?" he goes on, as though they're having a conversation instead of fighting to the death. "I'm not even anyone _important. _Like, you'd think only the big guys - you, Link, Zelda - would get the whole Get-Out-Of-Death-Free Card. But apparently _I'm_ immortal too."

Did this idiot _ever _stop talking?

"_Me. _A horse farmer. Immortal. Imagine that."

Springtrap closes in for the kill. This time, the man doesn't dodge away; he just stands there, utterly calm now, resigned to his fate.

"It doesn't matter anymore, though. Not really," he says softly. "After all, I _deserve _to die for dragging him into all this... but I've finally redeemed myself. You'll never get to him now."

The iron hands close on his throat. He doesn't react.

"Tomorrow is another day," he says quietly, and closes his eyes.

_Crack._

The sound of Jim's neck snapping echoes through the attraction. And Springtrap feels that familiar thrill of power, of _control_, as the man's body drops to the ground at his feet.

But he mustn't let himself gloat for too long. He has to escape - has to find that child who has maddeningly, infuriatingly, slipped out of his grasp for a second time. And this time, he won't let himself get distracted by petty sacrifices.

Slowly, laboriously, he drags himself away from Jim's still form, towards the glowing EXIT sign in the distance.

_I am still here. _The savage thought drifts through his mind, unbidden, bringing back memories of the first time he made a mistake, when he realized that the little boy in front of Fredbear's Family Diner wasn't the one he was looking for - and at first he'd felt guilty, but then that guilt had turned to shame, and shame to anger, and anger to _fury - _because how dare they call him a murderer, he was only trying to rid the world of a misplaced Hero, didn't they see that -

No. Control.

He takes a deep breath. _I am Lord Ganondorf, _he tells himself. _And t__he world will rue the day it forgot me._

The girl is next.


	26. Revelations

For Link, time seemed to be going in slow motion.

Everything around him had become dull, blurred together like a bad photograph, and he only dimly registered that people were asking him questions - then someone was shining a light in his eyes, and he blinked, feeling his pupils contract.

"Sir?" a voice said. "Are you feeling all right?"

He struggled to make his vision focus; the blurry shape standing in front of him sharpened into a woman - a paramedic, probably. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said, even though he wasn't. Inside, his mind was still reeling. _Wolf... Jim... dead..._

The light clicked off. "Do you feel up to answering some questions?"

_Breathe. Just breathe._ "...I think so." He must have alarmed the emergency personnel when he started hyperventilating, because they'd all converged on him like vultures, demanding to know if he needed oxygen or Xanax when all he really wanted was some _space_.

The paramedic finally moved aside, and a detective in a thick jacket stepped forward, studying Link with a peculiar expression - curiosity? Suspicion? Link couldn't tell. "What's your name, son?"

"Link."

The detective nodded, then gestured to the dark, hulking building that was Fazbear's Fright - now bathed in the harsh glow of police sirens and swarming with emergency personnel. "Can you tell us anything about what happened here?"

"Yeah, um... well, this morning I got a call from Jim saying that my coworker -"

"You mean, ah..." The man paused and glanced at his clipboard. "Mr. Orwell?"

"Um... yeah, I think so." Presumably his last name wasn't Richards this time around_._ "Anyway, Jim said that he wasn't answering his phone, so I drove over here to see if anything was wrong."

"Around what time was this?"

"Uh... six-fifteen, I think."

"Then what happened?"

"I went inside with a flashlight, 'cause it's dark as sh - heck in there," Link caught himself before he could swear; it was probably best not to curse in front of an officer of the law. "And I started calling his name."

Then he hesitated. The detective probably wouldn't believe a story about a sentient, bloodthirsty animatronic escaping and going on a killing spree; it sounded too contrived, and besides, no one was supposed to know that Jim had dug the thing up in the first place.

So he lied.

"And I didn't hear an answer. So, uh... so I left."

"Why?"

"I... I don't know, sir. I guess I just assumed he was already gone."

"And then what happened?"

"Well, then I drove home. And then I got the call to come back here and answer some questions, and... well, here I am. That's all I know."

The guy squinted at him for a moment; Link fought to keep a straight face. _I'm telling the truth. That wasn't a lie. I did not just obstruct justice._

Finally, to his relief, the detective turned away. "All right, son. You can go now." Then, almost as an afterthought, "I'm sorry about your friends."

"It's okay," Link said_._ But it wasn't, and it never would be again.

_I remember. _Those had been Jim's last words to Link - and it could only mean that after all this time, he'd finally remembered his past lives. How many more remnants of Hyrule were out there, trapped in this endless loop of death and rebirth?

How many of them remembered?

The detective, meanwhile, had lost interest, and was now discussing something in low voices with the paramedic. Link caught the words "total esophageal collapse" and "had to have been extremely strong." The thought of Wolf's throat being crushed by those metal fingers made bile rise in Link's throat, and he forced himself to turn away from the garish red-and-blue lights, opting to stare down at the pavement instead.

So. The animatronic had killed both Wolf and Jim, and then escaped the attraction (God knew where he could be now). Link was alone and out of a job. And if that wasn't enough, he now had _two _Ganons to worry about.

_Can things get any worse? _he thought bitterly. He knew the goddesses had put him on this earth for a reason, but maybe that reason was solely for their own amusement. Maybe they were just sitting up there in the Sacred Realm, putting obstacles in his path and laughing at his suffering -

No. He couldn't go blaming the goddesses. If anything, _he _was the one who had made this mess in the first place. After all, hadn't he let Ganon kill him on that day thirty years ago? Hadn't he allowed Jim to open the safe room without so much as a word of protest? Yes, there was no denying it: he'd created this monster, and it was a beast more terrifying than any he'd ever faced.

_If only I had a time machine, _he thought savagely, kicking at a rock and watching it skitter across the asphalt. _Maybe then I could solve all my problems._

A time machine...

Suddenly his mind went hurtling back through the centuries. Yes, he'd had a time machine once, or something a whole lot like it - and if memory served, it had been called the Ocarina of Time.

But where could it be now? Surely after all these years, it would have been lost or destroyed. There was no way it could have survived this long, not unless...

"Link?"

He turned. That detective guy was back.

"Yeah?" he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.

The man regarded him kindly. "You need a ride home, son?"

Link blinked. He'd taken a bus to get here, and he'd been planning to take one back, but it would be lot nicer to ride in an air-conditioned vehicle.

And yet... the guy had been so short with him earlier. Why was he suddenly being Mr. Nice Guy?

It seemed a little too suspicious. So Link settled on, "I'm good. Thanks, though."

"You sure? I'll take you right home. You look like you need some alone time."

Link hesitated. Maybe he was judging the guy too much - maybe he was just trying to be nice. But there was still that niggling thought, that tiny voice in his head left over from thirty hours of _close right door, check left light, close left door -_

With some effort, he pushed it aside. "...All right," he said. "Thanks."

"No problem," the detective said, and extended a hand. "I'm Detective Peter."

"Nice to meet you," Link said, shaking it. _See? There's nothing to worry about, _he consoled himself. _He's a decent guy. _The trauma he'd experienced in a previous life had clearly carried over to this one, bringing all of its irrational paranoia with it. Hopefully those scars would heal in time. If not...

Peter startled Link out of his thoughts by motioning to the car. "Shall we?"

Ten minutes later, a slightly more relaxed Link lounged in the backseat as Peter hurtled down the freeway. As it turned out, Peter was extremely chatty; he blabbered on and on about his family and the books he was reading and other things that Link didn't really care about at the moment, so intent was he on planning his next move. As a result, it was a good two minutes before Link realized that Peter was trying to get his attention.

"What?"

"I said, are you doing okay?" Peter was peering at him with something like concern. "You haven't said a word since we left."

"Yeah, I'm all right," Link said. "Just a little shaken up, I guess."

"Anyone would be, in your position," Peter said, returning his eyes to the road. "It's not every day that things like this happen." A noticeable pause. "Were you and Wolf very close?"

"Not very," Link said. "But I knew him pretty w..." He trailed off. A cold feeling was spreading through him, turning his blood to ice.

He'd never told Peter that nickname. He'd only said "my coworker."

But he couldn't let on that he'd caught Peter's slip, so he hastily finished his sentence. "...pretty well. We've been pals for a while."

"It's awful, isn't it?" Peter said. "I remember this one case I worked on..."

He started yammering on again, but Link barely listened; his heart was slamming painfully against his ribcage.

_He works for Ganon._

It was the only way he would know that name. And now his abrupt change of heart, his seemingly out-of-the-blue offer to drive Link home, suddenly seemed a lot less innocent.

But maybe Link was being paranoid again. Maybe Peter had just found that name in a company file somewhere - he was probably overreacting, it was no big deal, there was nothing to worry about.

And yet the feeling persisted that something was wrong here.

Peter, meanwhile, was still talking. "So we ended up bringing in the K-9s, because you can never be too careful, you know? And you know what we found?"

"What?" Link asked, trying to ignore the gnawing ache in his gut. Why was he feeling this way? The guy didn't seem familiar; then again, Jim hadn't seemed familiar either, and he'd turned out to be part of the cycle. Maybe Peter just didn't resemble his Hyrulean counterpart as much as Link did.

Although... if Link squinted and turned his head a certain way, the angles of Peter's cheekbones rang a very tiny bell. Like maybe Link _did _know him from somewhere, and it just wasn't clicking.

"They were walled up in the basement," Peter said, shuddering at the memory. "Nasty, huh? The guy must've been a psychopath."

"Yeah," Link said vaguely, not really listening; his whole being was focused on trying to place Peter's face. He didn't look like Ganon, or Zant, or Ghirahim. Not Vaati, either - the nose wasn't right. So who...?

Peter guided the car through an intersection. "So," he said. "Sounds like that Fazbear's Fright thing was some kind of horror attraction. Why would a guy like you be working there?"

"I needed money, I guess," Link said, mentally comparing Peter's face to Yuga's and deciding the forehead wasn't right.

"I remember the restaurant that place was based on," Peter said. "It was a pizzeria, right?"

"Yeah."

"Been closed for years, though."

"Mm-hm."

"You know, it's funny," Peter said. "As part of the investigation, I was looking through some old employee files, and apparently there was a guy named Link who used to work at one of the old locations. Same name as you."

Link's heart began pulsing in his throat. "That's weird."

"Yeah. It's such an uncommon name, too, you know? You think you two were related?"

"Maybe," Link said, and then added in a valiant attempt to change the subject, "So what've you got so far? In the investigation, I mean."

"Well, technically I'm not supposed to discuss it with a civilian," Peter said. "But it's very odd - both victims appeared to have died of strangulation, and yet the autopsy revealed that the first one's entire throat had caved in. Larynx and all. You'd have to be incredibly strong to pull that off - no normal human could do it."

_Jesus. _Clearly, Springtrap was not to be underestimated.

"I'm obviously being ruled out as a suspect, then," Link said, in a feeble attempt at humor.

Peter smiled. "Yes, you're in the clear. But I wouldn't mind asking you a few more questions, if you're up to it."

"All right." Link was expecting a few everyday, banal questions - _how old are you, where do you live, _that sort of thing - but what Peter said instead made cold fingers crawl up and down his spine.

"Where is she?"

Link blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"The girl." Peter's voice was beautific, utterly serene. "Where is she hiding?"

There was a palpable shift in the air then, and suddenly Link _knew - _he knew that this man was a part of all this. His gut feeling had been right.

He took a deep breath. "I don't know," he said. "But you'll never find out."

"Oh, I will," Peter said calmly. "I always do."

And suddenly Link realized something.

"Your last name," he said. "It's Cole, isn't it?"

"Clever boy," Peter said.

For Link _remembered - _remembered seeing that name splashed across those police reports, the ones in the manila folder that someone had left on his desk thirty years ago. The dirty cop. The one who'd been working for Ganon all along.

_P.T. Cole._

"But you know," Peter went on lazily, "an unusually long lifespan is just another perk of being immortal. Not that you would know, of course. Your incarnations tend to die off like fruit flies. Me, on the other hand - I like to stick around for a while, see to my affairs."

"Who are you?"

"What? You don't remember me?" Peter uttered a short, humorless laugh. "How disappointing."

It was then that Link noticed the car was slowing down.

"You know what'll happen if you kill me," he said, trying to be brave. "I'll just come back again."

"Oh, I know that," Peter said calmly. "But by the time your puny little soul regenerates itself, the cycle will be broken. Just four more Sages, and we will have the power to end the curse... permanently."

_Sages. They're gathering the Sages. _But that was impossible - surely the original Seven Sages were long dead, surely there was no way...

"Don't look so surprised," Peter teased. "The Sages have taken on forms long different than those you remember - you wouldn't even recognize them if you saw them." His smile widened. "Just like you still don't know me. Isn't that right, little fruit fly?"

Link focused on Peter's face, struggling to remember - and then it hit him.

"You're Agahnim."

"Ooooh! The little fruit fly knows me after all!" Agahnim's face lit up with a fiendish delight. "You have no idea how _satisfying _that is."

Link cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner. After all, the man had once infiltrated the Hyrulean Court in the guise of a benevolent magician; it was only natural that he'd be the ideal candidate for infiltrating the ranks of a human police force, too. Never mind that the blue skin, claws and robe had been lost in translation.

Agahnim, meanwhile, was unholstering his gun. "I hate these clunky mortal weapons," he mused, examining his reflection in it. "If only I still had my magic... well, this will have to do."

Link watched his movements closely. The moment he started to raise that gun was the moment Link would make his move. He mentally estimated how he'd strike - if he pressed on a certain spot along the ulna, it would force Agahnim's hand to open, which would cause the gun to fall out of his hand. It was essentially the only useful thing Link had learned from biology class.

_Wait for it..._

Agahnim snapped off the safety. "Farewell, little fruit fly," he said, and Link watched his elbow bend as he started to aim the gun -

_Now._

Link struck, and a lot of things happened at once.

He felt his fingers clamp down on Agahnim's wrist and twist, _hard _\- the gun began to slide out of Agahnim's hands, even as a loud _crack _echoed through the car. For a moment Link wondered if he'd actually broken the man's arm - but then the gun had clattered down near the brake pedals, and Agahnim sat heaving, staring at Link with shock painted across his features.

"Get out of the car," Link ordered. "It's over."

Agahnim's mouth flopped up and down like a beached fish. "You -"

"_Get out."_

The man swallowed and nodded. He groped for the handle - found it, opened the car door, and got out, apparently too scared to fight back.

Link slammed it shut, just to make a point. Now _he_ was in the driver's seat.

He grinned. It had almost been too easy; now all he had to do was -

Ow. _Ow. _What was that? It felt like there was a burning iron being driven into his ribcage. He put a hand on his chest to massage it; but the pain was getting worse now, and his hand felt oddly wet.

He took his hand away and stared at it. Blood.

He looked down at his chest, at the perfect, penny-sized hole just below his heart.

_Oh._

_I've been shot._

For some reason the realization was perfectly calm and logical, as though the observation carried the same amount of magnitude as, _nice weather we're having, isn't it? _Except now the first vestiges of panic were setting in. He was bleeding - a _lot - _and he had no idea where the nearest hospital was, or where he'd left his cell phone (he had a sneaking suspicion it was sitting on his bedside table at home). He was very probably going to die. And worst of all, by the time his next incarnation rolled around, it would be too late to stop Ganon's plans.

He cursed his own stupidity and yanked the gearshift from P to D. There was no going back now; he'd dealt with injuries before, and he could ignore the pain long enough to reach a medical center - or until he bled out all over the dashboard. Whichever happened first.

_Hylia help me, _he thought grimly, and stepped on the gas.


	27. Memories

_Link?_

_Can you hear me?_

_I don't know if you can. I'm not sure if I did this right - it's been a while since I did any kind of magic. But you knew that._

_Do you... do you recognize my voice?_

_It's me, Zelda. I hope this gets through to you somehow, because there's something I need to tell you, and__ I don't have much time - Ganon is gathering the Sages. He wants to use our powers to alter this timeline, and if he succeeds, this world will be plunged into darkness._

_You have to stop him, Link, and to do that, you need to find the Sages before he does. Because w__e have our magic back, Link - all of us._

_But you know what? That means Ganon does too. So you have to hurry._

_Do you understand, Link? You have to be strong. I don't know how long it'll be before this message reaches you - for all I know, it won't get there at all. Maybe the cycle is already broken; maybe you haven't been reborn._

_But l__isten, Link. If you're really out there somewhere, you have to come find me. All of us. We are the Sages, and we need you to save us._

_Do you understand, sleepyhead? It's up to you now. Just don't forget what you've lost, and where you've been._

_And whatever you do, don't die._

Link opened his eyes.

He stared drowsily up at the ceiling for a few moments, trying to comprehend the fact that there _was _a ceiling, because for some reason his brain hadn't quite caught up to the rest of him. He blinked a few times, and felt crust break on his eyelids. Clearly he'd been out for a while.

A thought finally emerged from the depths of his groggy subconscious. _Where the hell am I?_

The last thing he remembered was... actually, he couldn't really remember anything up to this point. That was probably bad, right? He closed his eyes and fought through the fog, trying to pummel his sleepy brain into giving him a name, or a face, or something.

Finally a word floated into his mind. _Zelda._

He wasn't sure why he'd chosen that particular word, but something about it felt right. "Zelda," he mumbled aloud. Yes, that name felt important. And he was... who, exactly?

L. Li... Link. Right, yes. He was Link. The memories were starting to trickle back, slowly but surely; it felt like his brain was slowly restarting itself after a long period of disuse. And he was here because... he'd been shot?

Oh - now he remembered. He'd driven to the local hospital, told the receptionist that he'd been shot. She hadn't believed him at first - how many gunshot victims came calmly walking through the doors, perfectly lucid and able to explain their injury? - and then he'd collapsed, and she'd started believing him. And that was the last thing he remembered.

And now...

He craned his head, studying his surroundings. He was in a hospital room - he'd gotten injured enough in his life to recognize it by the smell, a pungent combination of alcohol, lemon Febreze and hand sanitizer. He was alone for now, although he had the odd impression that someone had been here not too long ago.

Well, at least he wasn't dead. That was something.

He closed his eyes, tried to organize his thoughts as the events of the past few days came flooding back to him. He'd had a dream. No, it wasn't a dream - it was a message. From his Zelda.

_She's alive._

It warmed his heart considerably that she was out there somewhere, alive and well. And not only that, but if that last bit was any indication, she remembered him. She knew who he _really _was, who he'd been all along.

And she had her powers back.

Which made no sense, because why would they have returned now as opposed to, oh, _any other time they would have been useful? _Like preventing him from dying, for example. That would have been nice.

But that wasn't important, because she'd also mentioned something else - the Sages. If what she'd told him was true, Ganon was going to try to use their powers to alter the past; what he intended to change, though, Link wasn't sure. Maybe he was trying to "fix" the timeline somehow - after all, hadn't he ranted to Link that they weren't supposed to be in this world in the first place, that it was all a mistake on the part of the goddesses? Link had refused to believe it at the time, but maybe, just maybe, there was a kernel of truth to it after all.

Well, whatever the case, there was only one way to stop him: he, Link, had to change the past before Ganon did.

All of this thinking was tiring out his painkiller-fogged brain, so he took a break to gaze out the window. There were two pigeons fighting over a breadcrumb on the roof of a nearby building; watching them, he suddenly realized how lucky he was. He'd survived a bullet wound, grappled with Agahnim (somewhat) successfully, and had only been killed once so far - as opposed to poor Wolf, who'd died twice.

Maybe the goddesses weren't laughing at him after all. Maybe they'd been protecting him, all this time, and he'd been too wrapped up in his own problems to see it.

Thinking along these lines, he sent up a quick prayer to Din, Nayru and Farore, thanking them for their help and asking for guidance on his quest. If they heard him, they didn't give any obvious sign; but the two pigeons quit fighting and flew away. _Ah, well. S__o it goes_.

Now that he'd given his head time to clear, he went back to crafting his newest plan: changing the past. But what moment was he supposed to change? His first thought was to stop Ganon from killing his past self, but that would create a paradox, because that would mean his past self never died, which meant his future self was never born and therefore couldn't have time traveled in the first place. Maybe it would all work out in the end, but just to be safe, he decided not to try it.

No, he needed to change something else. There had to be something that started all this - one event that set everything else in motion. The linchpin. The spark.

But what on Din's red earth was it?

Well, he could worry about that later. First he needed to get discharged from the hospital, and then he could start tracking the Sages down - even though there was now a fully magic-capable Ganon tracking _him _down. But he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.

It was then that his wandering gaze landed on the calendar pinned on the wall.

Oh God. He'd been here for four days.

How much progress had Ganon made since he'd been unconscious? How many more Sages had they captured? This was bad. He needed to get going _right now, _make up for lost time.

It took some doing checking himself out of the hospital. First he had to explain to the very confused doctors that he'd shot himself in a hunting accident (he didn't think they'd take it well if he told them he'd been assaulted by an evil wizard diguised as a police officer), upon which they made him fill out a veritable forest of insurance paperwork, followed by some awkward questions about how he planned to foot the bill (he was hoping he could fix the timeline before they figured out how many canceled credit cards he had). Finally they discharged him with a prescription and a few remarks about his incredible constitution ("I've never seen a wound close so fast"), which thankfully didn't raise even more awkward questions.

And then he was left to sit in his car and brood about what to do next.

Now that the morphine had worn off, he thought he remembered Agahnim saying something about "just four more Sages." Which meant that Ganon already had three, and Link was a step behind before he'd even begun. But he wouldn't let that faze him - maybe Agahnim had been bluffing, or maybe they were having a hard time tracking the other four down. Either way, all was not lost.

Yet.

He sighed and let his head drop down on the steering wheel. God, he was tired. Maybe it was all the painkillers they'd been pumping into him, but for some reason all he wanted to do was lie down and forget any of this had happened.

There had to be a timeline, somewhere, where things were different - where he hadn't turned from confident badass into a nervous wreck that flinched at every shadow. Even now he was watching everyone around him for signs, signals, clues they might be working for Ganon. That guy in the blue Chevy looked suspicious. Maybe he was driving off to tell Ganon that Link had survived. Or maybe Ganon already knew that. Maybe everyone here was plotting against Link _right now -_

_No. No. Stop it. _If he couldn't prevent any external things from happening, he could at least control the internal ones, and right now he needed to preserve his increasingly fragile psyche long enough to find Zelda and the other Sages. That was all. He needed to stay sane until then.

Maybe he didn't have the Triforce of Courage, but he was still mentally sound, damnit.

He shifted his - well, technically Agahnim's - car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. As he drove, he began going through a mental list of everyone he'd known in his previous two lives, trying to determine if any of them might have been Sages. What about Jim? No, that didn't seem likely - and even if he had been a Sage, he was currently dead at the hands of Springtrap. There was no way Link could get to him until he was reincarnated. He crossed Jim off the list.

Then his thoughts turned to Wolf. The guy had been present for the majority of his previous two lives, and Link couldn't stop thinking that he was _important _in some way, that he was someone who mattered. He decided that Wolf was a "maybe."

He racked his brains, focusing hard. Who else could have been involved in this? Jake? No, that was silly - the guy was long dead by now. Then he briefly wondered about those old animatronics from thirty years ago - maybe a Sage was stuffed into one of those? But that was ridiculous.

He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that he didn't really comprehend where he was going, until he looked up and saw a dilapidated, hulking mass of a building crouching in front of him. It seemed... familiar somehow.

Oh. Wait a minute.

He stared at it for a long time, taking in the "CONDEMNED - STAY OUT" warning plastered across the front door, the blinds drawn down over the windows, the thirty-year-old graffiti scrolling across the walls. It had changed since he'd last seen it, but there was no mistaking it: this was the old location of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, the one he'd worked at in his previous life.

He frowned. He had no idea why he'd come back here; maybe the route was still filed away in his subconscious somewhere, and had only now decided to surface again. Either way, there was no reason for him to be here.

Unless.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, considering. The logical thing to do was turn around and get the hell away from this place. And yet... something more than instinct had guided him here. It almost felt like somebody had _led _him back, like there was something here they wanted him to see.

Then again. Did he really _want _to go back?

No. Of course not. He may be a Hero, but he wasn't suicidal. His mind made up, he reached for the shift lever -

\- _tap. Tap. Tap._

The sound was soft, barely distinguishable from the chatter of the birds in the trees, but Link's sharp Hylian ears heard it anyway. He looked around wildly, searching for the source - and saw a shadow in the pizzeria's window.

For a moment, he could have sworn he saw eyes peering through the blinds, _human _eyes - looking right at him. Studying him.

Then - _flick. _The blinds shook. The eyes were gone.

Link stared.

_That did not just happen._

But it _had _happened, he was sure of it - unless the drugs hadn't worn off yet and he was hallucinating. He watched the dingy windows for more signs of movement, but there was nothing.

_Am I going insane?_

It was a logical thing to ask, especially considering how paranoid and jumpy he'd been over the past few weeks. But surely he didn't have a vivid enough imagination to conjure up a pair of eyes in a window. No, he was _sure _someone was in there. Someone human.

He took a deep breath. Did he really dare? After all, it might be some kind of trick, an illusion created by Ganon's magic. Maybe someone was going to jump him the second he walked through the door, and he'd die a second time, which Zelda had _explicitly warned him not to do._

And yet.

He looked down at his hand, which was still hovering over the shift lever, ready to put the car in reverse and get him the hell out of here.

_Goddamnit._

He parked the car. Immediately he knew he was doing something stupid, and illogical, and Zelda would probably kill him if she knew about it. Except she wouldn't know, because he was just going to take a quick look around the building. That was all. Really.

He got out of the car, already knowing he was going to regret this. Which was exactly the same thing he'd thought thirty years ago when he'd taken over the night shift for Jake, and look how _that _had turned out. There was no reason to believe this time would be any different.

But he had a feeling about this. It was a hunch, really - there was just something about those eyes, something that had struck him as... well, he wasn't sure whether _familiar _was the right word. Déjà vu seemed more appropriate. Like maybe he'd been in this situation before, and he just couldn't recall when, or why.

Well, either way, he was going to do this, and to hell with anyone who said otherwise. He was still a Hero, after all. He needed to prove that he could still wear that mantle - that he could still save princesses, and slay demons, and traverse dungeons. And mostly, he needed to prove it to himself.

Because he was starting to get afraid that he _couldn't _do all those things. Not anymore. This form was weak, a shadow of his former self - although if that little incident in the hospital was any indication, his regenerative powers were finally starting to kick in. But it would take more than a little healing magic to stop Ganon, especially now that Agahnim and Springtrap had made an appearance.

Link chewed his lip, remembering his tussle with Ganon all those years ago - he'd lost his sleek fisticuffs prowess, his quick reflexes. It was as though all the Hero-ness had been drained out of him, leaving behind an empty shell. Would it ever come back? Or was he stuck in this form forever, with only a pair of pointy ears to remind him of who he'd once been?

_No. My strength will come back. It has to come back._

He wasn't sure why that thought drifted through his mind, but he clung to it desperately, his only lifeline. Yes, the power he'd wielded in a former life would return to him eventually. It had to.

Because he was terrified of what would happen if it didn't.


	28. A Dangerous Game

If there was ever a time when he hadn't gone charging blindly into danger, Link didn't remember it. That was how he worked, after all; he found a dungeon, he went into it. He couldn't imagine it being any other way. It was unthinkable.

But when he found himself entering a condemned building of questionable structural integrity, in full knowledge that there was at least one unidentified stalker inside, for _absolutely no reason_ other than sheer curiosity, he couldn't help but rethink his strategy. After all, it might very well be Springtrap in there waiting for him. Or, God forbid, Ganon himself.

But if it did happen to be someone unsavory... well, he wasn't defenseless anymore. He let his hand drift idly down to Agahnim's gun, now strapped to his belt and ready to draw at a moment's notice.

He was wearing it more for show, really. He wasn't sure he could actually shoot it - frankly, the idea repulsed him. Maybe it was the sheer _simplicity _of it; all it took was ten pounds of pressure on a trigger to end a person's life. It didn't require any skill. All you had to do was point and shoot.

_Mortals, _he reflected grimly, _have made it far too easy to kill each other._

He let his thoughts drift back to the matter at hand. The front door had been locked, but he'd manage to shimmy his way inside via a broken window; some vandal had probably thrown a rock at the glass. And now here he was, standing in the room that he vaguely recalled as the dining area, staring around at the restaurant he'd once called his workplace.

If it had been run-down before, now it was utterly derelict, the product of thirty years of neglect. Entire portions of the ceiling were missing, with wires hanging down from the gaps; the weak rays of sunlight that filtered in through the windows died by the time they reached the floor, which was missing whole swaths of its signature black-and-white tiles.

Link forced himself to tear his gaze away, letting his eyes wander instead to the place he remembered the stage being. A small part of him was disappointed (but the rest of him was relieved) when he saw that the animatronics weren't there; only a lone microphone stand remained where Freddy had once been.

"Sad, isn't it?"

Link whirled. The voice had come from the hallway off to his right, but it was too dark to see who was there.

"Who are you?" he demanded, trying to sound braver than he felt. "Show yourself."

"You know who I am. You've always known."

Link's heart dropped into his stomach. That voice... "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do."

Link squinted; his eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and now he could make out a tall, lean figure, leaning casually against the wall at the end of the hallway. There was something about its slight frame that rang a bell, somewhere deep in Link's mind -

"You still know me, don't you? You played a song for me once."

"...It can't be you." But even as Link spoke, the pieces were beginning to fall into place in his mind. The email. The folder. Those cryptic initials - _SK -_ the ones he'd never really thought about, was only now realizing what they stood for...

"Heh. So you do remember."

The voice was stronger, more mature, all childishness gone - but it was unmistakable.

Link fought to keep his voice level. "Why did you bring me here?"

"I want to help you," said Skull Kid, and Link saw the shadow lazily examine its fingernails. "But in order for me to do that, I'll need something from you."

"Do tell."

"I know where Ganon is. And I know what he wants."

"The Sages," Link said.

"Yes," Skull Kid agreed. "The Sages. But I can tell you how many he's got, and which ones. You want to know that, don't you?"

"...I suppose." Link tried not to betray how badly he needed this information.

"And I can tell you something better," Skull Kid went on. "I can tell you where he's searching for the next one. But of course, nothing is without a price."

Link hated bargaining with this... this thing, or man, or whatever Skull Kid had become. But if it meant being one step ahead of Ganon, it was a risk worth taking. "What do you want?"

"My price is this," Skull Kid said. "I have had a very important thing stolen from me, and I want it back. You will get it for me."

"And this 'thing' is...?"

"I cannot tell you," Skull Kid said.

At this, all of Link's senses went on high alert. "It wouldn't happen to be a mask, would it?"

"Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. It's merely something that has sentimental value to me, and it saddens me greatly that it is gone."

"Who stole it from you?"

"Unimportant," Skull Kid said, waving a dismissive hand. "But you will find it someday, and I assure you, you will know it when you see it. If that day ever comes, you must return it to me - and in return, I will give you the information you seek."

Link hesitated. It seemed like a hefty promise, especially considering that he had no idea if this 'thing' had magical powers or not. And even if it wasn't a mask, it might be just as twisted and diabolical as Majora itself. Would he be sentencing the world to a _second _apocalypse by agreeing to the deal?

Then again. Sometimes you had to choose the lesser of two evils, and it didn't sound like Link would have to fulfill this promise for a long time. And wasn't Ganon the more pressing threat right now? Skull Kid could be dealt with later.

With this in mind, Link relented. "All right. I'll get your lost item, if I ever do find it."

"_When _you find it," Skull Kid corrected.

"Whatever."

Skull Kid uttered a cold laugh. "Whatever, indeed."

Link had a bad feeling that this would come back to haunt him later, but right now he cared more about Ganon's plans than Skull Kid's. "Tell me what I want to know," he said. "From the beginning."

"Ganon has three Sages, and he is poised to capture a fourth," Skull Kid said. "And he knows the location of two more. The seventh, however, remains elusive to him - but I'm sure you know why."

Link did. Agahnim had demanded to know Zelda's location back when he'd been holding Link at gunpoint, which meant Ganon hadn't yet managed to track her down. _Whatever you're doing, Zelda, keep it up._

"The Sages he has are those of Fire, Water and Spirit," Skull Kid went on. "He has located Forest, but he has not yet struck - I suspect he's waiting to see if you'll intervene."

"He knows me too well."

"As he very well should," Skull Kid said. "Despite being a Hero, I'd say you are quite predictable. Not at all like your old self."

"I am _not _predictable."

"Oh, but you are. How did I know you would follow me in here? How did I know you'd agree to my terms? Your enemies can read your mind, Link, or as good as - and you'll have to change that if you want to stay off their radar."

With a massive effort, Link kept his voice steady. "Stop talking to me like you're my ally."

"I wouldn't call myself that. Perhaps a concerned spectator, or an omnipotent narrator. But not an ally - oh, heavens no. You would do well not to trust me."

"I _don't _trust you."

"Good," Skull Kid said, sounding pleased - as though he was the teacher and Link was a particularly dull child. "You're learning."

Link gritted his teeth. He hated being talked down to, but he would have to bear it until he could wheedle more information out of the imp. "Where is the Sage of Forest?"

"She was quite elusive for a while, but Ganon tracked her down. He always does," Skull Kid mused, studying his fingernails again. "You'll have to hurry if you want to save her."

"_Where is she?"_

"Touchy, touchy," Skull Kid teased. "All in good time. She's somewhere out in the country, as far as Ganon can tell, but he doesn't know the exact location - not that he needs it. His minions are scouring every farm in the state as we speak."

"That's not very helpful."

"What did you want, an address?" Skull Kid said wryly. "I don't know everything he knows. You're on your own."

"There has to be something else you can tell me."

Skull Kid was quiet for a moment, as though considering. "Well," he said at length, "I can tell you something else about yourself, if you're not opposed to hearing it."

"Oh, do tell. Do tell me all about how I'm weak, and predictable, and chasing every single carrot Ganon dangles in front of my nose. Is that what you're going to tell me?"

"No," Skull Kid said calmly. "No, nothing like that. But I want to warn you about this path you're taking, Link. Do you understand the ramifications of your choices? Do you understand that you've made some very poor decisions?"

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Do I? I think I do." He gestured to the empty show stage. "Take those animatronics, for example - you know which ones I'm talking about. And you also know what happened to them."

Link's spirits quailed. "Well, yes, but -"

"You knew why they were angry, all those years ago. And yet you died without giving them closure. You let them keep on suffering. They're still suffering, Link. And it's all your fault."

"No... I didn't... it's not my fault! I was too busy worrying about Ganon, and -"

"- and you, the Hero, still haven't freed their restless souls." Skull Kid's voice became singsong. "Where are they now, Link? Where do you think they are now?"

"I - I don't -"

"You know where they are," Skull Kid said, and now there was a note of malice in his voice. "Or at least, where the _pieces _of them are. Scattered all around a hundred different dumps, all across the country. Don't you wish you could turn back time, Link? Don't you want to save them?"

Link swallowed. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I want to save them."

"And how are you going to do that? Come now, Hero - you know the answer to this."

Link's voice was barely a whisper. "Change the past."

"Yes," Skull Kid said calmly. "That's right. You're going to change the past. But let me ask you something else - what are you going to change? What moment set all of this in motion? Think, now. Think hard."

Link shook his head mutely. He didn't know.

"Let me give you a hint," Skull Kid said. "Ganon already knows what moment that is. Do you know why? Because _he lived it_."

He let that hang in the air for a moment.

"And if you let him alter it the way he wants," he went on, "he will -"

"- change everything," Link finished.

"Yes," Skull Kid said, sounding faintly pleased. "He will change everything. And that's where you come in."

"So... so it really is up to me."

"I'm afraid so. Just remember, this is a dangerous game, little Hero... and my part in it will soon be over." Skull Kid's silhouette straightened. "So long, for now."

"...Wait."

"Mm?"

Link couldn't help but ask one more question. "Do you work for Ganon?"

"A fair question," Skull Kid mused. "So I'll give you a fair response. No, I don't work for Ganon - I work for myself. But that's not to say our motives don't, ah, line up every once in a while."

With that, his shadow slid across the far wall and around a corner, shrinking to a pinprick before finally vanishing from sight.

Link stared after it, both confused and elated. He knew where he needed to go now, and what he was meant to find - but he still didn't know what Skull Kid's motivations were, or why he bothered dealing with Link when he could just as easily be ferreting information for Ganon. Or maybe he was some kind of double agent, playing both sides against each other.

But either way, Link had gotten some valuable information out of him. And even if it wasn't true, it was still worth looking into, especially if it gave him even the tiniest chance of finding one of the Sages before Ganon did.

He turned and headed back towards the window he'd come in from, but not before shooting one last look towards the show stage. If what Skull Kid had said was true... those spirits were still out there somewhere, suffering.

_I will avenge you, _he vowed. _I will put you to rest. I swear it._

He climbed up onto the windowsill, ready to squeeze back out through the hole in the glass. On a whim, he glanced behind him one more time, just to make sure Skull Kid was really gone.

And he saw five pairs of eyes staring back at him, white pinpricks in dark, bottomless faces, hovering over the show stage.

Link sucked in a sharp breath. _You..._

They didn't move. Didn't say anything. Just gazed at him wordlessly, a silent plea that somehow, Link understood.

He swallowed. "I will avenge you," he said aloud. "I promise."

One of the spirits blinked at him. And then they were gone - just like that, in the space of a heartbeat. He'd appeased them in some way, Link realized; they weren't going to hurt him anymore.

He took a shaky breath. It was clear that they trusted him - trusted him to carry out his promise. And he _was _going to carry it out; there was no question about that. Unless he wasn't strong enough, or brave enough, or -

_You know what? No._

_Just - just no._

He'd had enough.

He was done questioning his own abilities, wondering if he was really the Hero that this world deserved. He was finished wondering if his powers would never return, if Ganon was stronger than him somehow, if he had done something wrong along the way. No more. Never again.

Because he was a _Hero, _damnit.

There would be no more cowering in the shadows. There would be no more hiding. No longer was he a frightened little boy, thrust into a role that he could never live up to, let alone understand. Starting right now, _right goddamned now, _he was a true Hero.

He wasn't sure why the revelation had come now, when logically it should have come much earlier - like when he'd been brawling with Ganon in the office all those years ago, or when he'd ripped a loaded gun out of Agahnim's hands. But it needed to come, and it was coming now. _Right now._

_I am a Hero._

_No - I am _the _Hero._

His body felt light now, like he'd been carrying some tremendous weight all this time and had only now let it slip away. He jumped headlong out the window, ignoring the glass that tore at his arms and legs, because he felt _nothing - _landed lightly on the balls of his feet, catlike, and rolled forward across the gravel, reveling in his strength, his _power_. He jumped to his feet and charged across the parking lot, his feet pounding against the asphalt - oh, how _good _it felt! The wind tearing at his hair, his eyes, his ears - he reached his car and vaulted up onto the hood, then onto the roof, effortless, graceful. And there he sat panting, watching the sun climb across the sky and marveling at his own abilities.

It was _back. _His strength, his speed - it was all back. Just like Zelda's magic, and Jim's memories. He didn't question how, or why, because that didn't seem important right now; nothing was important except the feeling of adrenaline pounding through his veins. He wanted to run some more, he wanted to climb things and jump across ledges and slay dragons. He wanted to feel like _himself _again, a feeling he hadn't had in decades.

But no. There was no time for those things now. He'd gotten a lead from Skull Kid, and he needed to act on it, before it was too late.

He climbed down from the roof of the car and got into the driver's seat, all the while feeling slightly in awe of what had just happened. Finally, at long last, the Hero's spirit had been set free from this frail, mortal self - and it felt _wonderful. _He felt refreshed, ready to take on anything, no matter how big it was or how many heads it had.

For the first time since he'd started this journey, he felt like maybe - just maybe - he stood a chance against Ganon after all.


	29. Devious Minds

Agahnim didn't have to be a mind reader to know Ganon was angry. _Very _angry.

As it was, he was surprised that his boss hadn't thrown a chair at him yet, which was something the man was apt to do when he got in these moods. But Ganon was still pacing the floor like a caged lion, growling a stream of frustrated gibberish under his breath - maybe it was the language of the Gerudo? Agahnim wasn't sure. Either way, he was bound to start hurling furniture soon.

And try as he might, Agahnim couldn't muster up the guts to offer an apology for what had happened. There was nothing he could say that could make Ganon forgive him, not when the ramifications of his mistake had been so great. So he sat quietly, like a frightened mouse, waiting for his punishment.

But it never came. Instead Ganon whirled and fixed his red-eyed gaze squarely on Agahnim. "What have I done," he said softly, "that you feel the need to destroy me?"

Agahnim didn't reply. There was no point. Anything he could have said would've resulted in getting a stapler to the forehead.

"Why do you continually disappoint me?" Ganon went on, still in that quiet, dangerous voice. "Have I done something to deserve it?"

"No, milord."

"You used to be a such a loyal servant. What changed, Agahnim? What happened to you?"

"I don't know, milord."

"You don't know," Ganon echoed. "I see." He turned on the slender boy lounging in the chair next to Agahnim. "What about you? Do you have anything to say about this?"

"No," Skull Kid said calmly. "I don't."

"Yes, you do. You always do. Go on, then - say it."

"Very well, I will say my piece. But you're not going to like it."

Agahnim swallowed. Skull Kid was the only person whom Ganon allowed to address him like that; anyone else with that brand of flagrant disobedience would take a steel-toed boot to the forehead. But Ganon tolerated it, partly because Skull Kid was wiser than both of them combined, and partly because Ganon devoured every scrap that Skull Kid could feed him about Link's location and plans. It conveyed a distinct advantage onto their side, especially now that they had already captured three of the Sages.

So Agahnim wasn't surprised to see that Ganon looked impassive instead of murderous when he said, "I'm listening."

"With your actions thus far, you have instilled in that boy a burning desire to destroy you," Skull Kid said. "And a motivated Hero is a rejuvenated Hero. By letting him escape death, you effectively ensured that he would regain the strength he had in a former life."

"I see," Ganon said coldly. And then he turned on Agahnim, so suddenly that the dark wizard shrank back in his chair. "So I should be blaming you for this, then. Shouldn't I?"

"No," Agahnim squeaked. "No, I'd really rather you not."

"I don't see why I shouldn't. After all, _you're _the one who failed to kill him."

"But milord, you must understand -"

"Your plan was foolproof, was it not? Lure him into the car, then shoot him. How could you possibly fail?"

"I _did _shoot him," pouted Agahnim. "Just not in the right place. He grabbed my gun before I could -"

"That's always your excuse," Ganon snapped. "It's always someone else, because your perfect little self could never make a mistake. Oh, certainly not. Nothing is ever your fault."

"Milord -"

"Enough," Ganon said, and Agahnim's mouth snapped shut. "I tire of your foolishness." Then, to the woman standing in the corner, "See him out."

She nodded and advanced towards Agahnim, who visibly quailed. "Milord, you must forgive me!" he begged. "He tricked me - I wasn't ready for -"

"Do not underestimate that boy," Ganon said quietly. "He may look like a frail little mortal, but frail he is not. He will have his powers back by now, just as I have mine, and that makes him dangerous. Understood?"

Agahnim took a slow breath, then nodded, becoming the complacent servant once more. "I understand, milord. Next time, he will not escape me."

"See that he doesn't." There was no pity in Ganon's voice, only cold fury.

Agahnim hunched his shoulders and let himself be escorted out of the room, but not before shooting a pleading look at Skull Kid. The boy offered a languid smile in return; clearly he was enjoying this.

When the door had shut on the wizard's back, Ganon turned to Skull Kid. "You, at least, have not disappointed me. Come - let us plan our next move."

"I wonder," Skull Kid said, "if I might first ask you a question."

"If you wish." Ganon would have throttled any other servant for that sort of impudence, but he had a special respect for Skull Kid. Perhaps he sensed the intelligence, the clarity in that pale, emotionless face - perhaps he suspected that behind those dark eyes lurked a mind just as devious as his own. Either way, Skull Kid was the only minion that Ganon had never called _worthless vermin_, or _insolent maggot, _names which the man freely tossed at everyone else he came into contact with.

And the respect was mutual. While Agahnim groveled pitifully for Ganon's attention, Skull Kid was quiet and obedient, never once questioning an order or begging for mercy when he failed. Slowly but surely, he had become Ganon's right-hand man.

And now he was about to test just how much trust Ganon had placed in him over the years. Of course, he'd start simple. He couldn't afford to make the man suspicious, not when he had worked so hard to earn himself a place at Ganon's side.

"The programmer boy," he said. "Who killed him?"

Ganon's expression darkened, as it always did upon any mention of Wolf. "Why must we speak of him? He was a stupid little maggot who thought he could get away with disobeying me. No more."

"I'm merely curious."

"I don't know how he died," Ganon relented. "Perhaps we have an ally in the shadows."

Skull Kid forced himself to maintain a look of puzzled indifference, even as his mind churned. _He doesn't know about Springtrap._

"And if we do have a potential recruit on our hands, I intend to find them," Ganon went on. "We need all the friends we can get nowadays... isn't that right, Nabooru?" This to the lithe, red-haired woman who had just reentered the room.

The woman smiled coldly. "Right, master."

"In fact, I think I'll put Agahnim up to that, just to watch him blunder about some more," Ganon mused, looking wickedly pleased; the sudden shift from chair-hurling fury to childlike glee was not unfamiliar to Skull Kid, who had been around long enough to witness plenty of his master's mood swings.

But there was one thing that bothered Skull Kid. He could sense the evil, the _malevolence, _lurking beneath the Gerudo king's surface; but he had not yet seen evidence of a killer instinct. This was not the same man that had murdered a child outside a diner, simply because they bore a slight resemblance to a forgotten Hero. No, this man was tamer, more docile - as though he'd subconsciously softened his personality to blend in with the modern world. Where was the killer hiding inside this wiry, sharp-tongued man with a Napoleon complex? Skull Kid wasn't sure, nor did he particularly want to find out. Perhaps it would only arise in a time of dire need.

Or perhaps it was gone entirely.

It wasn't a conclusion Skull Kid liked, but it was certainly plausible. After all, Springtrap had already broken out of his centuries-long imprisonment and murdered two men, while Ganon stalled and dillydallied and made silly plans to try and kill Link - even as the boy ran around gathering Sages right under his nose.

Skull Kid almost spat. It was _appalling, _really. Someone else needed to step up and kill this child, forever darkening the world under the shroud of tyranny. Someone ruthless, unforgiving, psychotic. Someone like -

He smiled. It was not a nice smile; it was a cold smile, filled with madness.

Did he dare? Was today really the day he exacted his mutiny, his perfectly planned ascension into godhood?

It had been _so _fun playing with both of them, after all. Ganon believed whatever Skull Kid told him about Link's plans, eagerly snapping up every scrap of information he could get - the gullible fool. And Link? Well, Skull Kid had a soft spot for the kid, he really did. But he wasn't about to let his ties to some fairy boy ruin his chance at infinite power. Besides, he'd exacted the promise he needed from the boy, and that had been the last phase in his plan.

Now all he had to do was put it into motion.

But maybe he was being too quick about this. He'd spent so long carefully perfecting every part of this plan, down to the last oh-so-meticulous detail, that if something were to go wrong because he'd rushed its execution... well, it would be devastating. He'd never get a second chance. And besides, there were still Sages to find and things to do. No, he supposed that he wasn't _quite_ ready to overthrow Ganon after all, however appealing the prospect.

But that day would come soon. _Very _soon.

Skull Kid smiled and leaned back in his chair, grimly satisfied in the knowledge that the cards were all in his hands, ready to be played at his leisure. And Ganon didn't even know it.

Meanwhile, Ganon was watching his servant. He disliked everything about the boy - this imp in a man's clothing. He was too smart for his own good; he heard too much, understood too much. He would have to die, and soon. But not before Ganon was finished wringing every last useful bit of information out of him.

Although. He could just strangle the boy now, and no one would be any the wiser; the stony-faced Nabooru in the corner certainly wouldn't care. He would lose a valuable servant, but would it be worth the trouble he'd avoid later? Ganon thought so.

_Still, _he thought, shooting a frustrated glance in Skull Kid's direction. _I need you, much as I hate to admit that. But as soon as you cease to be useful to me, I promise I will kill you myself._

How would he do it, though? The imp had proven himself unnaturally good at evading death. Maybe Ganon could hire an assassin, or get Nabooru to smother him with a pillow while he slept.

But no. No, he would not allow Skull Kid an easy death. He wanted to watch that boy _suffer _for all the times he'd smiled that insolent, taunting smile, lording over Ganon the knowledge that neither of them wanted to admit they had - that Skull Kid was important to Ganon, important enough that the imp probably thought it had never crossed Ganon's mind to kill him.

Except it had. And it did, all the time, a maddeningly strong urge that was impossible to ignore_. _But always, always, Ganon had restrained himself. Always, he told himself that he needed this annoying little scamp, because he did - neither of them could deny it. And that was usually enough to convince him to spare the imp's life, just for one more day. That was all. One more.

But his patience was running out. He didn't dare show it, but he was getting _sick _of Skull Kid's attitude. He was tired of the way Skull Kid never showed fear or discomfort, only smug self-satisfaction. The kid was too cocky for his own good. And that had to end.

But not yet. Not today. He would wait for the right moment, when he'd gotten Skull Kid alone someplace and there was nowhere to run. It would only take a minute to crush the imp's windpipe in his hands, and then he'd be rid of that snide little voice forever.

He smiled cruelly. All the cards were in his hands now, and Skull Kid didn't suspect a thing.

Nabooru watched the two of them as they smiled into space, each with their own private fantasy. She shook her head. She knew what they were thinking.

_It won't be long, _she decided, _before one of them musters the courage to kill the other._

She had already chosen a side, of course. It was just her nature - she went to the one with the real power, and right now, she knew who _really _held all the cards.

Thus satisfied, she turned to leave, but Ganon's sharp voice rang out. "Nabooru."

She turned and gave a pleasant, if not slightly forced smile. "Yes, milord?"

"I have a job for you," he said. "Make sure the Hero never finds the Sage of Forest."

_Interesting. _It had been a while since she'd received such an important assignment; she wasn't sure whether to be flattered or suspicious, but she bowed deeply anyway. "Your word is my command."

"And another thing," he went on, as though she hadn't spoken. "I want you to look into Wolf's death. I don't trust Agahnim to do it, not after he so spectacularly failed his last mission... but surely _you _won't disappoint me." His cold eyes seemed to drill into her. "Correct?"

"Yes, milord."

"Good," he said, and promptly turned his back on her. She was dismissed.

Nabooru left the room, with half a mind to start tracking the boy down right away - she'd been given this order directly from Ganon, after all, and that meant she needed to get started as soon as possible. But as she was easing the door closed, a snippet of Skull Kid's voice reached her ears: "...do about the other one?"

She paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"Nothing," Ganon said delicately. "That matter has resolved itself."

"But -"

"No. He is dead. The matter is closed."

And then silence. Whatever they'd just discussed, it was over - and even though Nabooru had no idea what it meant, it made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

_Something's up, _she decided. _And whatever it is, the two of them are in it._

But it was not her place to ask questions. She turned and glided down the hallway, leaving their impromptu meeting room behind; there were preparations to be made, blades to be sharpened, and new prey to hunt. And a few minutes later, she had forgotten the exchange entirely.


End file.
